I thought my kettle was broken when it beeped at 95°C even though I had set it to boil but then I remembered that we are now mile-high and the water will boil at a lower temperature. I imagine this will cause even more headaches for our family’s baking recipes, but the most immediate concern is how this affects my preferred brewing method.
There is always tweaking to be done, but the gist is: get the water as hot as possible and compensate for lower temperatures by grinding slightly finer (one notch lower on my Baratza Virtuoso grinder) and steeping slightly longer (which is a natural extension of a finer grind but is important for those using an Aeropress or — shudder — a French press). Be prepared for dry air to mess with the bean freshness. Try not to expect too much of light roasts.
This is also more or less what Kagi’s LLM response gave me, [Note: Kagi, unlike free search engines, doesn’t shove half-baked LLM responses down your throat at any opportunity. Rather, it only provides an “AI” response if you end your query with a question mark, which is both simple and delightful. ] the explanation of the physics and chemistry behind it taking three paragraphs instead of three sentences. Which was fine! What was not fine were the actual search results: a depressing line-up of sloppy websites to which I shall not link but which go like this:
- homepourover.me
- letsbrew.net
- homebaristaguide.com
- highaltitudelife.com
Et cetera, et cetera.
Each article was a shockingly long (“Coffee Brewing At High Altitude Explained: What Matters, What Doesn’t”, Read time: 11 minutes) elaboration on the above three points broken up by AI-generated images of coffee setups precariously perched over various mountainous regions. Each homepage was a depressing array of overly glossy thumbnails atop headlines which promise a plethora of affiliate links: “Best Heat Guns for Perfect DIY Coffee Roasting at Home”, “Top Coffee Makers That Keep Every Office Buzzing”, “Master the Basics of Home Roasting: Equipment and Techniques Unveiled”, and so on and so forth for 166 pages, 10 articles on each page, none of them with a publication date because you and I both know they were made in one day, nay, one caffeinated, agentic late-night session.
Would it not be nice if there was an actual indie blog written by a hyper-obsessed coffee aficionado, a fellow high-altitude brewer, or a person really into something? You know, like the old days? If there still are, they are being crowded out by one-man shows who are really good at faking it, at least until you read the first few sentences and, if they’re lucky, click the first link.
Not to poo-pooh on the indie web! I am absolutely certain there are many a cracking post on it about coffee, maybe even some about brewing it at high altitudes. It is just so gosh darn difficult to find. For example, Kagi’s Small Web project — excellent at showing random posts from the indie web — cycled through the same five posts in its “Food” section, only one of which was about coffee (and quite good at that — I am now a subscriber). I would also assume that Kagi’s algorithm would prioritize it over the AI slop if there was indeed information that I needed there but no, link after link it was one sloppy website after another, with a few unanswered forum posts in between.
So maybe this post is now it?