Training Log by Lisa Zancanella - The Philosophy behind practice

That old good guy of Aristotle used to say that we should act like navigators: mastered the theory, what’s more, important is knowing where you want to go and being reactive to the changing circumstances in which you are. All the theories, the recipes, the coffee superheroes statements, cannot substitute the direct experience on the brewing act.

Which means everything I took for granted, now I critically need to prove it by myself.

I never really learned anything significative that wasn’t coming from an error. Trial and error: that’s supposed to be the motto for the next months of preparation to the Nationals.

The error comes from inconsistency: doing something in a different way from the planned one.

Inconsistency is one of the most feared descriptors for a cup of coffee. Inconsistency, however, happens to be the first synonym of “variable”, which is the base of the coffee brewing, mainly in water, grinding, method, recipe.

So yes, we - I - need to go thought inconsistency, error, and variable for appoding to consistency.

If the past months I thought brewing was 90% knowing all the theories of the variables and then apply them to the coffee, now I definitely consider it in the opposite way: brewing may be more about directly experience how to act and react to this variables.

That’s basically what happened during the last week training with April: I spent half of the time witnessing that most of the concepts I’ve been reading don’t really apply to what I’m brewing.

“Impara l’arte e mettila da parte”, my Italian grandmama would say.