About

Hi, I'm Z — yes, that's where the extra letter in CuppanoZ comes from. This is where I keep notes on the coffee and tea I'm drinking, and whatever I'm figuring out along the way.

By day I'm a scientist, which mostly means I can't leave a thing alone until I understand why it works. That turned out to be a problem in the kitchen. Why a pour-over tastes different on Tuesday than it did on Monday, why a tea only really opens up on the third steep — I find that stuff fascinating, and this is where I write it down.

It's not a glossy product site. Think of it more as a notebook left open on the counter: some of it is careful and methodical, a lot of it is just me chasing a better cup on a slow morning and telling you how it went.

What I'm into

• Coffee — espresso on a Breville Barista Pro, slow mornings with a Clever Dripper, and more dialing-in than any reasonable person would bother with.
• Tea — the part of the site that keeps growing. Leaf, water, time, patience.
• Travel & backpacking — some of the best cups I've had were nowhere near a kitchen. The notes wander out there now and then.
• Photography — the camera comes along for most of it. Good light and a full cup is a hard thing to walk past.
• …and whatever else I happen to be falling down a rabbit hole on this month.

When I write about gear

When gear comes up here, I'm trying to do one thing: get the details right. A lot of it comes from living with the equipment myself; the rest from reading and testing until I actually understand it.

A few links on the site are affiliate links — if you buy through one it helps keep the site running, at no extra cost to you. It doesn't change what I say. The full version is on the disclosure page if you want it.

Brew Log — a side project

I like jumping between beans: a new roaster, a different origin, whatever a friend won't stop talking about. The problem is that every switch means dialing in from scratch, and I kept losing track of what actually worked. The apps I tried for this felt like more work than the coffee — powerful, but fiddly enough to be stressful before I'd had any.

So I built my own. Brew Log is a small, local-first web app for keeping track of beans and shots — just the essentials, with a bit of stats and science underneath. Your data stays on your own device by default, with an optional online backup if you'd rather have it synced and safe. It loads fast, and it's simple enough that I'll actually use it before I'm properly awake.

It's free, and still growing — like everything here. Take a look at Brew Log ↗.

Say hello

If something here helped, or you just want to compare brewing disasters, I'd love to hear from you. Thanks for stopping by — go make something good.

— Z