As those who follow my Instagram stories would be able to attest to, I’ve been making pour over coffee every day for the better part of the past 7 years. Every day I pick out my favourite beans, weigh them to a tenth of a gram (!), grind away by hand, and ever so carefully hold the kettle over the server, as I craft my coffee drip by drip.

However, it was only recently that I realised one trick that has made that pouring so much easier. It’s so simple you can hardly call it a trick though.

The right amount of water.

For the longest time I’ve either put too much water in the kettle so that it flows down the side of the kettle and not into the server, or too little that I spend a whole lot of time trying to find the right balance so that only one drip comes out at a time.

It turns out all I needed to do was to fill my kettle to about 60%.

Knowing the right amount of experience comes through experience. Sometimes it takes a lot more experience than we expect, and we feel stupid for it taking so long, and sometimes we pick things up right away.

Either way, experience is the teacher, and again it’s a matter of doing things to learn. Experience is how you find the right amount of experience. There is no other way.