How a tea drinker makes coffee

I’ve been a tea nerd for longer than I’ve been a coffee drinker. I’ve always said that I can deal with a bad cup of coffee in exchange for the caffeine boost but I cannot cope with a bad cup of tea. I consider the “diner scenario”: at a diner, I will gladly order a cup of drip coffee from the bottom of a pot that’s been sitting on a Bunn burner at too high of a temperature for too long before I’d order a cup of hot water with a Lipton tea bag dropped in it. Swilly coffee dregs I can tolerate, truly awful tea I cannot. This is reasonable, I think, for someone that used to run a tea shop but never quite dove into the deep end of the coffee pool.1 In the last decade or so I’ve gotten a little pickier about my coffee, at least when I have control over it. So, I thought I’d share my current brewing regimen from the perspective of someone who will take an inordinate amount of time measuring and properly making tea gong fu style but doesn’t really have the patience of a true coffee nerd when…