A new start: Phil Wang on how a coffee grinder with 12 settings changed his life
I bought myself a coffee grinder in 2018 so I could grind beans at home, thus finalising my transition – much like the grinder itself – into a pretentious and unnecessary tool.
I rarely have more than one cup of coffee a day. So, naturally, I bought the most expensive grinder I could find. It boasts an LCD screen, an aluminium alloy casing and 12 options of grind coarseness: at level 12, the dust is so fine it can be absorbed through the skin; at 1, intact beans just fall out. I have convinced myself that 10 is the right setting. This is based on nothing other than the fact that the resulting coffee is brown and hasn’t killed me. Mmm. Just how I like it.
Before the grinder, I had to buy ground coffee (you know, like a child), putting me at the mercy of big bean and whatever grounds those latte-ed fat cats deigned I deserved. That is, if what was in those bags even was coffee. As far as I knew, I was buying coffee-flavoured graveyard soil, lapping it up like the grinderless worm I was, happy merely to be taking part in this experiment we call culture.
Well, not any more. No more maybe-soil for me. Now, I make coffee only with freshly ground beans, thank you very mocha. And does the coffee taste fresher? You bet! By which I mean: who knows? It tastes like coffee. Now that I think about it, I can’t remember ever having tasted “stale” coffee. I have never sipped an americano and thought: “This tastes especially old.” All coffee tastes old. It’s bitter. That is how “old” tastes. How can something taste freshly old? What the hell am I doing with this grinder? Why did I think I needed it? Did I really believe that grinding my own coffee was going to take me further along the road to enlightenment? Have I taken on a new inconvenience in an attempt to reclaim some thin sense of authenticity in an ever more inauthentic life? Maybe the latter is true. Maybe I just need a coffee.
I have broken down the morning’s brewing process into so many parts that I have essentially given myself an unpaid internship that I am woken up for every day. One of the many upsides of being a full-time comedian is that you get to enjoy weekday lie-ins, but now I am buzzed awake in my kitchen-adjacent bedroom every morning by the cacophonous whirring of grinding beans when my flatmate (or, as she insists on calling herself, “sister”) gets up at silly o’clock (8.30am?) to assemble her hot joe before going to work.
Now, when I have coffee out with friends, I am able to take a sip and say: “Mmm, that’s well ground,” and they will believe I know what I am talking about – they know about the grinder. At supermarkets, I find the coffee I want, ask an assistant: “Do you have this in beans?” and they say: “No.” “Ah well,” I say as I put it back on the shelf, “I only buy beans now, you see.” “OK,” they say. “I bought a grinder, you see,” I reply. “I really should get back to the till,” they say.
I return home to find the grinder is already full of beans. What’s more, there are bags and bags of unopened beans in the kitchen, ready to go, waiting for their time to grind. I haven’t had a coffee in months, I realise. I don’t even like coffee. I just like buying things. Gadgets, beans, trainers, books, games, bowls. That is my coffee.
Still, 12 grind settings!
The Comedy Lineup featuring Phil Wang is available now on Netflix
This story of change was published in the G2 special issue A new start on 31 December