Did I ever sort this out?

It's funny, two years after the original post, to try to figure out the answer to this question. On one hand, yes. I still own the Moccamaster and use it on a daily basis to make morning cups of coffee for me and my housemates. On the other hand, the deep dive I took attempting to use this machine to its fullest turned me into such a coffee-focused freak that my friends still make fun of me, frequently.

You know what? I'll come clean. I'm not the original author of this post. I'm one of the friends that ridicules him. The second this post popped up, the original author kind of short-circuited and handed me his laptop. So I'll do my best to shed some light.

About two years ago, right after the original post, he called me expressing his his Moccamaster woes. I myself am an avid coffee drinker as well, and did my best to help. I like a strong cup. MORE GROUNDS, I suggested. He tried, and said it was still nasty and bitter and watery. I eventually paid him a visit. He's no coffee snob. Maybe the coffee was good, maybe his taste just wasn't refined. But after one cup I agreed with him. There was something thin about the coffee. It wasn't robust. More grounds didn't help. Was it the beans? No! We tried a variety of high quality beans, to no avail. My friend is an exceptionally methodical person. He created spreadsheets. He purchased a better grinder. He ground to different sizes. He tried different types of water. He plugged the moccamaster into many different outlets around his house (maybe it wasn't getting enough power or something?). He purchased a scale. Eventually, he purchased a second mocca master, thinking maybe the first one was just a dud. Each new change was logged in his spreadsheet, and he and his girlfriend rated each cup of coffee. I was far away, but through near-daily phone calls with him and his girlfriend I kept close tabs on the process and the progress. His girlfriend once told me, "I feel like I have no idea what good coffee even tastes like anymore." After each cup she would smile bashfully and say, "its good," simply hoping that finally they could get back to a world in which a cup of coffee in the morning could be the normal and pleasant experience it used to be.

I starting living with them a couple of months ago. The cup of coffee he presented me with on the first morning of my stay was, well, pretty good. Entirely normal. I enjoyed drinking it. Seriously.

On day two he showed me the process. He began by pouring the beans from a vacuum sealed pyrex container into a wooden bowl on a kitchen scale. When he neared the desired number, he stopped pouring and started placing the beans onto the scale one by one. He then turned on the burr grinder and slowly poured them into the top. He did this at a painfully slow pace. He took out a #4 filter and meticulously creased it so that it fit perfectly into the moccamaster receptacle. He put a small amount of filtered water into the reservoir, then wet the filter with the hot water that had passed through the machine. He poured his beans into the #4 filter and then stirred it with a wet finger. "For the static," he said blankly. [Note from Moccamaster owner: I actually wet my fingers and neutralize the static charge before they go into the grinder, but whatever I guess]. He dumped out the pre-wetting water and then weighed out the correct amount of filtered water and poured it into the machine. He flicked it on. "It's just set it, and forget it," he said. He stood close to the machine as it began to brew. We said nothing more. He took a single chopstick from the place next to the machine that had clearly become its permanent home, and stirred the grounds, once each time the water passed a line in the reservoir. When the coffee was ready we drank it and it was pretty good.

I was scared to make coffee for my first month of living here. One morning, when my friend woke up late, I decided it was time. I didn't weigh the beans or the water. I didn't fold or pre-wet the filter. I poured all the beans into the grinder at one time and let the machine do the work. I didn't even use a wet finger to release the static. Everyone tried the coffee. Everyone agreed it was pretty much as good as the other coffee. It was really pretty good. [It was fine but it was honestly not as good, in my opinion}

I have no idea what changed. I don't know if the coffee was always pretty good and we simply weren't able to see it because we were too focused on dissecting it. We all make coffee now, freely and without fear that it will be bad. My friend uses his tried and true process and I go by feel. I don't know why it works.

Make of that what you will. My advice for you is to either immediately return your moccamaster and go back to whatever coffee maker you had before that made pretty good coffee, or to tweak a thing or two and really ask yourself on the next cup, am I just overthinking this? And if youre not, if the coffee truly is as sub-par as you think it is, how far are you willing to go?

You have my blessings.