For April Fools, a Reddit pranked me to putting ketching in my coffee grounds, with a convincing bullshit spiel about how it really does good things for your brew. It was so bad I had to throw the cup down the drain.

But in those brief moments, I believed OP, and I was happy I tried.

Coffeesnobs don't have the adventurer's spirit. They would consider it an artifact of blasphemy to spend $1 worth of beans and 5 minutes of effort on experimenting to create what will probably be a shitty cup.

I don't want to "dial in" my coffee specs. Flow? No. Volume? What for? Temperature? 90C is fine for anyone.

I want to "dial in" how much ketchup to add to the grounds of your pourover, I want to "dial in" the amount of orange seeds I use, I want to "dial in" the STRANGENESS.

From my many years of fucked up experiments, I can give you the following

• Salt, in small quantities, hides bitterness and elevates other tastes. This is now known as a "lifehack" because of this delectable dude.

• Baking powder -- in small quantities -- can cancel out the acidity of your lightest roasts. For me, I find the acidity dominates other flavors, and with it canceled, I can identify floral and fruity notes I wouldn't otherwise. As a bonus, acid+base cancel out to a small amount of salt

• Zebra blends are my name for a blend which combines dark and light roasts. That's it. You will under-extract or over-extract one of the two, but nobody cares. Try it out. So much you can do

• On that note, a little bit of light roast helps my darkest roasts. I have a very slick, oily dark roast that gums up my grinder. I've been adding a small amount of light roast beans (say, 2g light roast + 13 dark roast). The effect is that my beans grind better and pour more easily into my aeropress, but also it has a welcome effect on the taste.

• You can just eat the beans. You get all the caffeine in this case, so, caution. On that note...

• Caution with alcohol: Alcohol is a solvent which extracts caffeine at room temperature better than water at 90C. You will get more caffeine per bean if you make an extract!

  • This one is a warning. If you are ever experimenting with alcohol in coffee, assume 2% to 3% caffeine by weight, and assume it will all get extracted. So, 15g of beans might make you a decent mug (say, 150mg caffeine). But 15g x 3% = 450mg of caffeine. That means you might extract 3x more caffeine than you expect!
  • This depends on so-many factors. The "assume 3% by weight" is so you have a healthy upper-bound. Don't get surprised by caffeine