Claude helped me buy coffee

Those of you who know me well, or have visited my house, might know that I’ve been geeking out on specialty coffee for the last 7-8 years. It all started in 2018, when my wife and I randomly decided we’ll start intermittent fasting (in order to lose weight), and I read up that drinking black coffee is a good way to keep the hunger pangs away until you have lunch as the first meal of the day.

I quickly bought myself a Hario V60 pourover filter (and paper), and walked up to the then nearby Electric Coffee Company in Ealing (London) to buy my coffee beans. I didn’t know that much about coffee then, but as I started making it regularly (I’ve stopped intermittent fasting now, but continue to make specialty coffee at home) I’ve developed very strong preferences.

Moving back to Bangalore in 2019 meant I had access to excellent locally grown coffee, and the simultaneous takeoff of the specialty coffee industry in India has meant that there is a variety of excellent roasters here who take this excellent locally grown coffee and make it more excellent.

In 2020, I added a Baratza Encore grinder and an Aeropress to my collection. In 2021, I got myself an Aeropress Go, to brew coffee on my travels (I’ve never enjoyed nescafes or nespressos or any other hotel coffees). In 2022 (or 23), I also added a Hario Switch hybrid immersion-cum-percolation brewer, and a Hario Buono kettle. And a Hario carafe for good measure. Benki Brewing Tools close to my house stocks filter papers for all my equipment.

Now that leaves the coffee. There was a time (in 2022/23) when I was in firm exploit mode - always buying the Heisenberg roast from Savorworks (yes, I live in Karnataka, the state that grows the most coffee in India, but I was drinking coffee grown in Tamil Nadu and roasted in Delhi). Then they stopped stocking it (one problem with specialty coffee is that demand and supply can both be unpredictable, and so stockouts are common) and I started experimenting again.

Early this year I attended one coffee trade event in Palace Grounds in Bangalore, where i (re)discovered Naivo Coffee. This time around, I liked some of their coffees, and they are also cheaper than Savorworks (for the same quality) and so have stuck to them.

In any case, I continue to experiment with my coffees, and experimentation means that there is a good chance I go wrong. I know there are some attributes I like and some I don’t, and while optimising for attributes I like, I forget to look at ones I don’t. Like I generally like natural light roasts, but last time round saw “natural” and bought some dark roasts instead (and those don’t do well on the equipments I have - they are better for espresso machines).

So this morning I asked Claude (Code) to pull up all my coffee bills from my GMail and make a comprehensive list of all coffees I’ve bought over the years, along with putting together the attributes. And then I opened it up on Excel and gave each one a rating on a 1-10 scale (some of the old ones are from memory, I should admit, and so may not be accurate).

And then based on this, I asked it to build a model on what attributes of coffee I prefer, and it put together a document. It also gave me a prompt that I can put into Claude for Chrome when I am on a roaster’s website.

FWIW, this is what Claude tells me about my coffee preferences:

One-line filter: light-to-medium roast + natural/experimental-ferment + syrupy body + fruit/funk notes + sweet-backed acidity. Skip washed medium-dark chocolate/nut coffees.

In any case, I went to Naivo’s website and put in the Claude generated prompt into Claude For Chrome. It examined all the coffees on sale today, and those that are in stock, and gave me ratings. I decided to go with a combination of explore and exploit - one that I had already bought recently and liked, and 2 that it recommended based on my old preferences.

Let’s see how this goes!