Sometimes, you just need to make a coffee
I own too many ways of making coffee.
Actually, no. I reject that statement immediately.
I own an entirely appropriate number of ways of making coffee, with significant scope for further expansion.
At present, my collection includes a V60, several cafetières, a moka pot, a coffee pod machine and, of course, an espresso machine. Each has an important role. And I will defend this position with considerably more enthusiasm than is probably appropriate for a conversation about hot bean water.
The pod machine is quick.
The espresso machine is for when I want to feel vaguely like a barista.
The moka pot is for when I fancy something a little different.
And the V60 and cafetières probably get used the most because they make lovely coffee, require relatively little faff and, crucially, don't leave the kitchen looking as though I've attempted an invasive procedure on a bag of coffee beans.
But there is another reason I particularly like the V60.
It lets me use my scales. Not normal kitchen scales. That would be far too sensible.
Two decimal place scales.
Because apparently there are people in this world who measure coffee approximately. I am not one of them.
Coffee, but unnecessarily precise
There is something deeply satisfying about making coffee properly. Or at least what I have decided constitutes properly.
Beans weighed. Water weighed. Everything timed. The ratio carefully considered.
A level of precision normally reserved for pharmaceuticals applied to a beverage I'm going to drink while standing in my kitchen wearing pyjamas.
Could I simply scoop some coffee into the filter paper, add some water and hope for the best? Of course.
Would it probably taste absolutely fine? Yes.
But where is the joy in that?
No, I need my scales. I need the timer. I need to know exactly what I've done so that when the coffee tastes particularly good I can nod knowingly and pretend this was entirely the result of my extraordinary technical ability rather than the fact I bought decent beans.
And I've realised recently that perhaps the ridiculous precision is actually part of why I enjoy it so much.
Here is a proud photo of exactly 22.00g of coffee weighed out on my infamous scales.
Most of my life is not particularly controllable
Medicine has many wonderful qualities. Predictability is rarely one of them.
You can start a shift with a beautifully organised jobs list. You can prioritise it. Colour-code it. Perhaps even use boxes.
And then approximately seven minutes later somebody becomes unwell, your bleep goes off, a cannula has gone, the computer stops working and the jobs list has become a historical document describing the life you once hoped to lead.
You cannot control who becomes unwell. You cannot control when somebody arrives in resus. You cannot control how busy the department is. You definitely cannot control whether the hospital printer has decided that today is the day it finally gives up on life.
Even outside work, life is rarely particularly obedient. Plans change. Things go wrong. You get tired. You get ill. You suddenly remember an email you should have replied to four days ago at precisely 23:17.
There is always something. And I think that's partly why there is something so comforting about standing in my kitchen and making a coffee.
Because, for a few minutes, the world becomes very small. Coffee. Water. Scales. Mug.
That's it.
A tiny area of completely unnecessary control
If I put the right amount of coffee in, it stays there.
It does not develop an unexpected oxygen requirement.
It does not ask me to review its potassium.
It does not suddenly start having horrific stridor.
Coffee is wonderfully compliant. I get to care about tiny things. Ridiculously tiny things.
The grind. The temperature. The pour. A number on a scale to two decimal places (because one decimal place is for amateurs!).
And the stakes are gloriously low.
If I make a bad cup of coffee, nobody comes to harm. There is no incident form or morbidity and mortality meeting.
I just think "Hmm. Bit bitter.” And then tomorrow I try again.
There is something extremely freeing about having a hobby where you can obsess over the details without those details actually mattering very much.
Work-life balance is a slightly odd phrase
We talk a lot in medicine about work-life balance. From the first med school interview to the interview for specialty training, we (myself included) bang on about it and pride ourselves in a showcase of said 'balance'.
In all honesty, I've always found the phrase slightly strange.
It makes it sound as though there should be a perfectly calibrated set of scales with MEDICINE on one side and LIFE on the other. With both sitting beautifully level while you smile serenely somewhere in the middle.
That has not been my experience. Sometimes work is enormous and other times life outside work gets more attention. Sometimes you're revising, doing nights, moving house, seeing friends, going on holiday or simply spending an entire Sunday doing absolutely nothing because you have achieved sentience but very little else.
I don't think balance necessarily means dividing everything equally.
I think it's more about making sure there remains something outside work that belongs to you.
Something you look forward to that has absolutely nothing to do with your portfolio. Something that will never earn you a certificate. Something you don't need to be particularly good at. Something that doesn't need to become a side hustle, a research project or another achievement to stick on your CV.
Just a little something you enjoy.
We're quite bad at keeping hobbies as hobbies
I think medicine occasionally trains us to see everything through the lens of productivity.
You read? Excellent. What did you learn?
You exercise? Great. What distance? What time? What's your VO₂ max?
You bake? Have you considered entering Bake Off?
You enjoy teaching? Excellent, please provide twelve pieces of feedback and upload them to your portfolio by Friday.
We can make absolutely anything into work if we try hard enough. And perhaps we don't always need to.
I don't make coffee because it advances my career. There is, perhaps surprisingly, no section of the anaesthetic curriculum entitled:
“Demonstrates competence in pour-over extraction.”
I make coffee because I like coffee. I enjoy the ritual. I enjoy learning about it and trying different beans. I enjoy using equipment that I absolutely did not need to buy but nevertheless maintain was a sensible financial decision.
And yes, I enjoy weighing things to an absurd level of precision. That's enough.
It's also strangely therapeutic
I'm slightly reluctant to describe making coffee as mindfulness because that makes it sound as though I'm about to sell you a £40 candle. But there is definitely something mindful about it.
When I'm making a V60, I'm generally thinking about making a V60.
Not tomorrow's shift, my portfolio or an exam. Not the seventeen things I haven't done yet.
I'm watching water move through coffee. Which is both extremely mundane and, apparently, sufficient to keep my brain occupied.
It's a beautiful process, with movements to do and things to measure. There's a smell. A beginning and an end. And then at the end of it you have coffee.
Which seems a considerably better reward system than most wellness activities I've encountered.
The collection will continue to grow
I would also like to make it clear that this post should not be interpreted as an admission that my coffee making collection is complete. Far from it.
There are gaps. Concerning gaps.
Entire brewing methods remain unrepresented.
And I think it would be irresponsible of me not to address them.
Will another coffee-making implement dramatically improve my life? Probably not.
Will I nevertheless spend several weeks researching one, comparing reviews and convincing myself that it fills a very specific niche which none of my existing equipment could possibly fulfil? Absolutely.
This is who I am now. I have accepted it.
Find your coffee
As much as this post is about coffee and my strange obsession with detailed measurement. It's also about pointing out that in a job which can consume an enormous amount of your attention, energy and identity, it's important to have something else.
A thing which you can be weird or particular about. It doesn't need to be impressive or make you better at medicine. It doesn't need to make you better at anything. It just needs to be yours.
Something that reminds you there is still a whole person underneath the scrubs, ID badge and increasingly battered pair of hospital shoes.
For me, one of those things is coffee. A small ritual. A little pocket of order in an otherwise fairly chaotic life. A few minutes where I can care enormously about something that, ultimately, really doesn't matter. And sometimes that's exactly what I need.
So if you need me, I'll be in the kitchen.
Trying to explain why a scale capable of measuring to two decimal places was absolutely necessary.
Four Eyed love,
Dr Steff
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