I think you will rethink many of these ideas once you start roasting your own beans. Many optimisations are highly dependent upon the bean itself, the roast le

I think you will rethink many of these ideas once you start roasting your own beans. Many optimisations are highly dependent upon the bean itself, the roast level, the quality of the roast (for example how well you controlled the temperature as you get to first crack). A quick word about bloom: if you are doing pour overs with beans that are not too old, how long you let the coffee bloom can have a dramatic effect on flavour. The problem you are running into is the coffee you are using, I think. I really like Pact, but I never once received coffee that was less than 4 days old. Often it was 7-8 days old. Looking at the web site for Limini seems to indicate the same. They are optimising for people who want a fire and forget method of coffee making and don't know how to control the acidity of the coffee they are making. Once you start roasting your own you will probably discover (as I did) that the most interesting time for a coffee bean is between 2 and 8 days. The most consistently good is probably 6-10 days. Once you get over 10 days, there is very little you can do with brewing skill and it's just an inevitable decline in flavour over time. All of those optimisations that you think don't have an effect are very important, but you are using old coffee beans and therefore haven't realised it yet. But as the topic of the article says, all of this is only important if you are interested in having a new hobby. You can make consistently decent coffee with moderately old beans and using a consistent approach such as you describe. But since you are interested in roasting, I hope you take the next step! It really is an eye opener.