Definitely not not about the coffee

Here’s the part that usually costs me my snob card: I drink Nespresso. I’ve run a Vertuo Next since it launched, recently moved to the Vertuo Up, and there’s a red Aeroccino 3 next to it doing the milk. Arondio is the daily brew, usually before I’m fit to speak to anyone.

It started there, in my Durbanville kitchen. Convenient, consistent, and still not the cup I was getting at the café down the road. That gap bugged me. So I changed one thing at a time and wrote down what happened: capsule choice, cup temperature, water, how long the machine had been sitting. Some of it mattered more than I expected. Some of it mattered not at all.

Several thousand cups through one machine teaches you exactly what it does well and where it quietly gives up. I’ll take that over a shelf of gear I’ve used twice.

That habit isn’t new either. I spent a decade as a personal trainer before teaching myself to code and moving into software, with no formal training and no shortcut. Both careers came down to the same thing: change one variable, measure, repeat. Coffee gets the same treatment, just with better smells.

Those notes became Not Not Coffee. Nearly ninety guides and reviews now: brew methods you can repeat on a sleepy Tuesday, honest notes on the gear I live with, and buyers guides that compare what shows up in the cup instead of what’s on the spec sheet.

The name is a promise with a wink. Is this good coffee? Well, it’s not not good coffee. I take the brewing seriously and myself a lot less so.