All Coffee Is Between 4 and 8
I've been a Breville Barista Express user for 7ish years now. It makes solid espresso and I've gone through stages of really getting deep into all the in depth steps: temperature, beans quality, weight, etc.
It felt fun and interesting to experiment, but it was definitely not an "efficient" way to make coffee. After a while I'd always fall back to making espresso and turning it into a hot Americano most of the time.
Few weeks ago I was watching the cycling series by VC Adventures about cycling from Canada to Mexico(great watch, highly recommend!). And in one of the episodes he made a comment that all the coffee he drinks (he takes it black, just like how I do) is always somewhere between a 4 and a 7. So, worst cup of coffee is a 4, and best one is around 7.
It kind of stuck with me. It felt small but profound at the same time. So, I'm going to think about coffee about the same way, with my range being more of 4 to 8. 4 is the instant coffee that I make when everyone else is asleep, and 8 is the flat whites my spouse makes for me, or a really fancy latte at a nice coffee shop. Simple, but I think it will make me enjoy coffee more equally :-)