Yes. Every time I see coffee advice like this I wonder if there's ever been an actual study on it. I don't think I can tell the difference between coffee at 92 degrees vs 99 degrees. What percent of people actually can?
I don’t think I would be able to tell - I make fussy coffee, but not to this extreme.
So there's varied ways to adjust each given aspect of preparing coffee (including times of everything, the process itself, the order of the process and so on). And how you tweak each given aspect will have varying degrees of noticeable effect on the taste of the drink (some have almost none). Beans roasted 3 weeks ago probably won't be discernable from beans roasted 4 weeks ago. Beans roasted today might be discernable from those roasted a week ago, though.
Each of these aspects isn't inherently independent of one another either. Coarseness, brew time, and pressure are often very closely linked and adjusting one or the other often requires adjusting the other for desirable results.
Now while some of these sort of tweaks are tiny, combining all sorts of tiny tweaks can result in noticeable larger differences. It might not be obvious what it is because of all of the small component improvements, but the end result is something that, even slightly, is noticeably improved, which is true for about anything.
Ultimately the question is does all this effort combined yield enough improvement that's noticeable. Maybe one small improvement isn't noticeable like adjusting from 92 to 99 degrees. That combined with a series of other tweaks might yield something worth the effort though.
I know when I first started brewing espresso at home I laughed at a lot of advice thinking certain aspects of the brewing process were silly so I'd skip them or just ignore it all together. Things like weighing my beans, tweaking grind size, and so on. My first few weeks of espresso drinks were... pretty disappointing. Why can Starbucks (which in terms of espresso is often lackluster) make better espresso than me at home? As I went down the rabbit hole and adopted more silly strategies, I tasted notable improvements.
It's not just me either, I've had friends try throughout the process and it went from "thanks, that was drinkable" being nice to my not so great coffee to now people saying "wow that's really great, how do you make that, that's the best coffee I've had."
It sounds stupid until you start tweaking all these little parts. I'm not entirely scientific about it, much of it is a hit of an art and inference with science mixed in. I'm at a point now where I think no matter how many slightly improved tweaks I make, I won't be able to tell the difference and it's not worth the time.
From your example, 92 to 99 C might come down to how much energy the water actually has and how precise you can measure it. When you're approaching boiling, some parts of the water probably is boiling and made a phase transition, you're measuring an average of some other part that may not be a good sample of the whole. Those parts that are boiling may result in damaging organics in what you're brewing leading to bitter flavors you don't want, so backing off gives you some margins of error in your measurement. 7 degrees might not make too much difference if it's say 95 and 88 C (a little more time might make up for similar results) but something approaching a critical point like boiling might actually matter.
(some) Programmers can't do anything without knowing everything about it
edit: auto correct did me dirty
I rarely exactly follow a recipe so it's important to understand what effects the steps have so you can experiment with them. I've been trying to perfect cookies for years.
I wonder if that’s a part our (everyone’s) inevitable future that we didn’t conceptualize yet playing on “default settings”.
But out of curiosity, how much time does the coffee nerd community spend pondering and tweaking environmental variables?
For example, ambient room temperature and relative humidity? Can't do a whole lot about pressure, short of tracking historical trends vs present air pressure and setting expectations, I suppose.
Other factors: tamping down physical, emotional irritants, such as screaming children, freshly burnt toast, headaches, etc.
And something that is adjustable but not quickly so: the (paint) colour(s) of the room. It's been something like 30 years, but ISTR hearing that different colours can affect us in subtle ways. For example, red can help stimulate the appetite. I imagine good lighting (eg, warm lighting, avoid fluorescent) is another variable.
All this to ask: do coffee nerds consider tweaking any of the above, or only those things that are in very close proximity to the grinder and espresso machine?
Nice! I got a bit burnt by a Quick Mill Andreja and have always wondered if it related to the the conversion to 240v that was done on it for New Zealand. The reality never came close to the reviews.
I’m now on a Faema E-61 Legend and an orange Mazzer Robur - it’s like having a particular large traffic cone in the kitchen. Every so often I consider a more tuneable double boiler, but going back to your comment, appearances matter and and my ridiculous setup makes the coffee seem better.
I worked a bar with a 3-group. What a joy to work with.