So I drove to Walmart when I was living in New York in the fall of 2018 on a mission, and I bought a fake Chemex and a bag of pre-ground “Deathwish” coffee. And for a while, that solved the issue. It certainly prevented me from buying any more darker-than-burnt “Pike Place Roast” drip coffees from the Starbucks drive-thru.

Come about a year later, after first moving to Utah, I’d been having my newly upgraded coffee like this every morning. But the occasional visit to some of the killer specialty coffee shops throughout the Salt Lake Valley (I know – ironic that there even were any, considering the bleak outlook our Mormon brethren have on the hot bean juice) left me feeling like my coffee at home was still lacking.

So I wanted to start understanding coffee on a deeper level.

I sat on the floor of my empty apartment (at the time, getting my coffee game straight took priority over getting a couch), and down the YouTube rabbit hole I went. I learned about the importance of buying coffee from transparent, ethical, and ideally local roasters. About buying whole bean and grinding fresh. Single dose. And that drinking pre-ground coffee straight off the grocery store shelf and brewed with boiled tap is about as good as making your spaghetti carbonara with toilet bowl water. I learned how light, medium, and dark roasts actually interact differently with the palette. I learned about fermentation and about “natural” versus “washed” processing. I bought the book “Craft Coffee” by Jessica Easto. And most important (and expensive) of all, I learned that I needed some nicer equipment to start brewing a better cup at home.

So the living room couch remained a faint bookmark within Google Chrome as I scrolled Fellow’s coffee equipment catalog instead, salivating, and embarked on what’s now been a 7+ year journey into the world of specialty coffee. A ritual that’s changed my life, gets me out of bed every morning, and for sure makes me the most annoying person you could possibly travel with.