Jake & JZ

10 years ago, we learned how caffeine really works, and it changed how we use, consume, and enjoy coffee. Tune in for a Jake & JZ deep dive on caffeine — from working with Blue Bottle, to our current coffee routines, to insights and tactics for making the most of this wonderful substance.

On episode 14 of Jake & JZ, we talked about:
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Creators and Guests

Host
Jake Knapp
Host
John Zeratsky

What is Jake & JZ?

Weekly podcast about startups, design, marketing, technology… and anything else we’re thinking about. 🤓

Hosted by Jake Knapp and John Zeratsky, co-founders of‍ Character Capital and bestselling authors of Sprint and Make Time.

Jake (00:00)
So I'm pretty sure, that you can divide the world into two classes of people. There are those who are into opera and those who are not into opera. I mean, no judgment. I'm not going to pass judgment here, but I have firmly been in the not into opera camp for my whole life. Yeah.

JZ (00:12)
But which one is better? As long as we're dividing people, might as well rank them as well.

Yeah, same, same.

Jake (00:28)
I definitely grew up with, my mom is into opera and I grew up with my dad teasing her about it. Like, oh, that sounds like the she's backed into a hot stove kind of thing. Whenever there was, you'd hear a snippet of opera probably more a thing for me where I'm just like, I don't really get it. I don't really know.

What's going on there? That feels like a very sort of fancy pants world that I just don't, don't get. But, but here's what happened. We're, as I think, you know, we're homeschooling our younger son. And so as part of the homeschool curriculum, some of it is projects that we make up, but a lot of it is this curriculum that we, we follow and we get to choose which projects to do. And he gets to choose which.

JZ (00:57)
Yeah, totally.

Jake (01:17)
What, what thing does he want to focus on? And, and so for his arts and history curriculum, one of the assignment choices was watch an opera and, he was like, that sounds interesting. Let's do that. And so my wife and I were like, well, okay. Like, I guess we have to figure out now how to, how to watch an opera. so God bless her. Holly did the research. She looked it up and you can, you can get like a seven day free trial.

JZ (01:40)
You

Jake (01:47)
to the opera channel, the Met in New York, which is, guess, like a big opera building or something. they have a, yes, Metropolitan Opera. Yes. They have their own. Well, see, you know more about it than you're giving yourself credit for. So they, they have, as does everyone these days, a streaming service, you know, that you can subscribe to. And so, yeah.

JZ (01:47)
The Opera Channel.

Okay.

The Metropolitan Opera, I assume. Yeah.

No, I know that that's a place. least I think I do. Sounds plausible.

Wait till it gets bundled with five other

streaming services by Disney. Yeah.

Jake (02:17)
Yeah. Yeah. Like which tier do I get with my T-Mobile subscription? Does it have ads or no ads?

Right. But it was seven day free trial. So we're like, we can easily watch an opera in seven days. It was, there were a lot of hiccups getting the thing activated and the QR code on the phone and making it work on the TV. I just think the teams who are doing some of these streaming services that are not your top tier ones are,

They're not maybe putting as much focus on the tech as they are on the opera, which is probably as it should be, but it was a little tricky to get in. so we watched this opera and we watched the opera that I think is kind of the, the crossover opera hit. If you're going to watch one opera, it's probably Carmen. And

JZ (03:04)
Okay, I've heard of

Jake (03:05)
I have to say I kind of got into it. Like the music in Carmen is, know, whether you think it's good or not good, think anyone would listen to it and be like, wow, okay, that's, that's catchy and kind of epic. And, know, it's definitely.

JZ (03:19)
Yeah. Like you have

to recognize it as like objectively good and impressive.

Jake (03:25)
Yeah,

right. It's just like, okay, you got me opera. it's got some like energy to it. And, and then, you know, when you watch it on streaming for one thing that has subtitles, which is a really big help to me, cause otherwise I had no idea what's going on. and I mean, cause you know, even if, even if they were singing in English, which they aren't, it would be a lot to parse out with the way that they sing.

JZ (03:36)
wow, yeah. Yeah.

Right.

Jake (03:49)
But the other thing is that I had to sort of tip my hat to the athleticism of singing like that for such a sustained period of time. And especially the woman who's like the lead role, cause she's on singing like pretty much all the time. And it goes on for like three hours. Like we had to watch it in like several increments. And she's just basically, yelling. mean, if you just, if I just imagined it in my terms, I'm just like.

JZ (03:57)
Yeah, totally. Yep.

Yeah.

Jake (04:16)
If I was yelling for three hours with no breaks, mean...

JZ (04:17)
Yeah.

Yeah, it's sort of like playing a brass instrument or a saxophone or something where you're just like, you're just pushing air, and controlling your neck and like all those muscles constantly for three hours.

Jake (04:23)
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. the, you know, enacting. Yeah. And they're actually, mean, and they're good. They got like some, know, it's very, it offers over the top emotive, right? It's like, that's sort of part of the thing is it's like, it's absurd. And then it always ends with somebody dying and they die really slowly, but it was, it was quite, it was quite impressive. And at the, at the, the other thing is they don't wear microphones. So like,

JZ (04:33)
And then acting too, right? Yeah.

Jake (04:58)
If you watch like a lot of plays, the actors have a microphone like hidden in their hair or their hat or something. If you watch Hamilton or something, they've got microphones hidden, but in opera they don't do that. So they're just, you know, huge, yeah, huge theater and they're just, it's all breath. So it was pretty cool. But the thing that I really loved about this was after the thing was over, we had enjoyed it so much that we watched the special features.

JZ (05:00)
interesting. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Mm-hmm.

all the more impressive.

Jake (05:24)
And the special features had interviews and they interviewed the conductor and the conductor is this Italian guy who was so passionate about, know, he's conducting the orchestra. part of the thing with opera is you've got like an orchestra down there who's playing the music live. Just like when you took me to home alone with the San Francisco orchestra playing it, which was a, a mountain top event for me. But the, this guy said, Hey, you know, the, mean, he said it.

with an Italian accent, which I'm not going to do to offend our Italian listeners, but with a wonderful Italian accent. said, look, this opera, he also didn't say, look, you know, he something more sophisticated, but look, this opera was written by this guy who, who wrote it. he died, not long after the opera came out. And when it first came out, it was a flop and it has become over time, like the opera,

JZ (05:54)
Yeah.

Looking good.

wow.

Jake (06:16)
so he never knew what a, what a big deal it was and what sustained power it would have that, centuries later, we'd be still watching it. And so he said, you know, so I tell the orchestra and I feel that every time we perform this opera, we must correct this injustice. And he said it was such a heartfelt, I just thought.

JZ (06:18)
Wow.

You

Yeah. Yeah.

Jake (06:38)
You know, yeah, that's inspiring. And the

way that we approach our work, I think in a way it's like, an attempt to correct injustices of effort being wasted. And so I, yeah, I just came off of that on like a, opera high. Yeah. It's been converted. We've been, we've watched more since then we actually paid for the subscription in the end. I don't know how long it'll last.

JZ (06:48)
Totally.

That's great. So you've been converted. Yeah, you converted out of the trial period. Very impressive.

Speaking of Italian culture, going to make an episode about caffeine and coffee.

Jake (07:10)
Very appropriate. Very appropriate.

Let's do it. Let's record a podcast.

JZ (07:13)
Let's do it.

Welcome to episode 14 of Jake and Jay Z the weekly podcast about startups, design products, marketing strategy, opera, caffeine, coffee, other beverages and topics that we are interested in and thinking about. That's Jake over there. I'm Jay Z that's short for John Zyrowski. We are the founders of character capital. We're the authors of as of just last week, three books sprint make time in our new book click, which we're so excited about.

Jake (07:44)
you

Three months.

JZ (08:04)
This is our podcast. And if you want to get an email every week when we release a new episode, you can go over to jakeandjay-z.com, sign up for that. Jake, this episode is about caffeine, about how we consume caffeine, how we use caffeine. How did you become interested in the effects of caffeine? I mean, other than the, you know, the, the normal ways that people get excited about caffeine, which I think we're all aware of.

Jake (08:16)
Yeah.

so a key moment for me was a design sprint that you and I were a part of when we were at Google ventures, working with blue bottle coffee, a company in whom we invested.

JZ (08:40)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Jake (08:43)
And we did a couple sprints with Blue Bottle. We did one that we wrote about in the sprint book. We did another one.

JZ (08:49)
Right. That was sort of when

Blue Bottle was first launching their online business. So like first version of the website where you could just go on the website, buy beans, have them shipped to your house, that sort of thing.

Jake (08:53)
Yes.

Yes, yes, that's right. And in a second sprint that we did with them, we got to spend some time with Ryan Brown, who's a guy who had been in the coffee business for a long time, also sort of the startup and tech business. He is really into coffee and really in particular knew a lot about how caffeine works.

He just was talking about kind of the mechanics of caffeine and the mechanics of the molecule. He'd wait to drink his first cup of coffee and we're all making coffee. Just, I'm just kind of like routinized. Like if there's coffee available, I'm going to make it at all times and drink it at all times. Yeah. Yeah. And here Ryan is like really calculated about it.

JZ (09:26)
Yeah.

Yeah, I was basically like a caveman for coffee. was like, drink coffee, get energy.

Jake (09:43)
And I thought he was kind of nuts at first, but you know, the more we talked to him about it, I got very intrigued. so I've in hindsight, I have unknowingly or unwittingly been experimenting with caffeine, different types of caffeine, different times of day, different amounts, but I hadn't ever really consciously thought about it. was just sort of whatever I did at the time, whatever kind of made me feel good in the moment.

And that was the moment when I started thinking how, you know, this is a little bit of a chemical reaction going on in the brain and it probably is worth some special consideration. So that's, that was for me, that was a key moment. What about for you? mean, you're a very conscious caffeine drinker.

JZ (10:25)
I don't think I really was before that. think that was the same moment of inspiration for me. I've always really enjoyed coffee, even independent of the benefits of caffeine. really like coffee. I like the process of making coffee. I like the coffee industry, coffee shops. We talked about Starbucks and other things on the yeah, think once I...

Jake (10:46)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

JZ (10:52)
started to learn about it from Ryan and from you, I was like, man, this is such a powerful tool for energy. Everybody can relate to that feeling of you drink coffee, you get energy. When it works perfectly, it's almost like this new level of consciousness where you're not just more awake, but you really feel like you can.

You can be better. can be smarter. You can have faster reaction times, all these good things. but I was like, man, this is, this is such a powerful tool. Like I should understand it in a more, slightly more sophisticated way. So, that was what kind of opened my eyes to it. And, and then when we wrote make time, we went even deeper. actually interviewed Ryan on like the mechanics, some of those things that he had taught us earlier during that blue bottle sprint.

Jake (11:41)
Yeah, that's right.

JZ (11:46)
So do you wanna kind of briefly explain like sort of what we learned, what we put into make time kind of the basis for how we think about caffeine?

Jake (11:56)
Yeah. Well, I'll give you first a little brief history of caffeine for Jake, going back to before I was really conscious about how I consumed it. And I remember as a kid all the time drinking soda, drinking Coke and Dr. Pepper, which have both have caffeine in them. And it never a huge Mountain Dew fan, but I would drink those a lot. got into coffee in high school, but it was always like a mocha, which is, you know, sort of a

JZ (12:01)
Okay.

Mm-hmm.

Jake (12:23)
A lot of milk and a lot of chocolate syrups or sugary.

JZ (12:26)
It's the soda of coffee.

Jake (12:28)
Yeah. The jolt cola of the coffee world. And so that was my kind of coffee experience for quite a while. And my first job at Oakley, the sunglasses company, this is my first sort of place where I was, had unfettered access to like a soda fountain. I would just drink coke all the time. Yeah.

JZ (12:31)
Yeah.

Super dangerous.

Jake (12:53)
I had my kind of mentor, my boss and mentor there, he was always drinking diet Coke. And I was like, well, what makes me an individual is I drink regular Coke. And then when I got to work at Microsoft, I started to shift from drinking soda to drinking black tea. had this like, I would make like a, in the little kitchens there, I would get like black tea bags and like mint tea bags and like combined to make like a mint tea. And then I would just drink that all day. And I remember I had this huge mug

So it's basically the, the short version of this TLDR. I was drinking caffeine like all the time and also like as much sugar as possible, which in hindsight, you know, is, just kind of like in Mad Max Fury Road when the guy is like in front like spitting.

JZ (13:28)
Yeah. Yeah.

you

Jake (13:38)
gasoline into the, into the engine. It's, it's, it's going to make the engine kind of go rev a little too much, but. No, it's to be young. Yeah. Anyway, I slowly shifted into coffee, but I wasn't really thinking about it too much. So the, thing that kind of developed out of this Ryan Brown conversation was I've made the shift to coffee and.

JZ (13:45)
to be young.

Jake (14:05)
wasn't really thinking too much about when I drank it or how often or how late in the day, how early, none of that stuff.

JZ (14:12)
And it's important because coffee in general has more caffeine per volume than pretty much every other beverage. mean, now there's like energy drinks that have like, you know, truly ludicrous levels of caffeine, but compared to like soda, coffee is kind of the highest dose caffeine source you can get. it becomes even more important to at least pay attention to the effects it's having.

Jake (14:37)
That's right. And I would say physiologically, it seems that over time for me, my ability to process it has declined.

JZ (14:45)
Yeah,

which is very common, I think. Yeah.

Jake (14:47)
As my enjoyment of it has actually gone up, like I enjoy coffee so much more. It's such a shame.

I'm like, why all that stupid, you know, 20 year old who didn't appreciate it. You could have had all the coffee you wanted, but, so this, the big kind of insights for me, from Ryan, one is, it takes a really long time for the body to process caffeine. This might not be news to many people, but to me it was news and really just kind of like registering that.

JZ (14:54)
Yeah, yeah, only he could have appreciated it.

Jake (15:15)
Hey, like it, continues to disrupt what's going on in your brain long after you might feel it. So it could disrupt your sleep. Even if you're way past feeling like you've got any kind of effect from the caffeine, it's still kind of buzzing and you know, on some low level and your brain needs to be so chilled out sleep. And if you, if you wear like an Apple watch or have any kind of sleep monitor thing, and you see the like different levels of sleep.

JZ (15:15)
Totally.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Right.

Jake (15:43)
That was also kind of driven home for me, to get into the deepest phases of sleep and the, you know, the parts where you're restoring stuff, you really need to be totally in the right brain mode. And caffeine can do that for hours and hours and hours afterwards.

JZ (15:53)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah, I

think it's after six or seven hours, half of the caffeine is still in your bloodstream, still circulating. Just really crazy.

Jake (16:00)
Yes.

Crazy, which is crazy, because there's no

way most of us are feeling it at that point, right?

JZ (16:07)
Yeah. And you

would think about, I'd have a coffee at 2 PM. Like that's totally fine. But, seven hours later, it's nine. Maybe you're thinking about going to bed. You get in bed at 10, 11. There's still like a pretty good percentage of that caffeine hanging out in your system.

Jake (16:22)
Yeah. Yeah. And actually I just saw a study yesterday came out where they were talking about how people who stopped drinking coffee at noon live longer. And they're like, there may be, you know, maybe correlation to different lifestyles and stuff, but it's still pretty interesting. I know I was like, Ooh, okay. I do like that 1pm coffee, but I don't want to die.

JZ (16:31)
wow.

I'm going to switch to 1159. Okay. So, so first,

first big lesson was caffeine sticks around in your body way longer than you think it's going to. It takes a long time for the body to process.

Jake (16:52)
Yeah,

that's right. Second big lesson was how it works. Caffeine blocks this receptor for a thing that makes you sleepy. So one of its primary actions, and I think there, I think it does some other stuff too, but one of the primary things to understand is it's got this little molecule that's bouncing around and it gets onto these adenosine receptors and adenosine.

JZ (16:57)
Mm, yeah.

Yeah.

Jake (17:17)
If the adenosine, which your body naturally produces could get onto that receptor, it would make you groggy and sleepy and tell you it's time to kind of chill out, maybe take a nap, maybe go to sleep, but caffeine blocks it. So it's the interesting thing about understanding that mechanic is like, okay, once the caffeine gets on there and blocks it, then your body's thinking, man, the adenosine is really not connecting.

JZ (17:26)
Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Jake (17:43)
We need some more adenosine. So your body

starts to produce right away, more adenosine to counteract. And that means that's how you get this tolerance to caffeine. So caffeine isn't really necessarily making you more alert. It's just kind of spiking that alertness. It's giving you a little bit more control over your, over your, your wakefulness. And that was interesting and also interesting because it, it gives you the, the foundational theory for the caffeine nap.

which is another thing that I remember, I think it was came from Ryan, I think is where I first heard about this idea. The idea with the caffeine nap is you drink some coffee or whatever, drink some caffeine, tea, whatever a while for that stuff to, bind to the receptors.

JZ (18:13)
Hmm

Yeah.

Jake (18:28)
You nap while you nap the adenosine naturally clears out. That's kind of how it works. Like it tells you to rest and then it clears out. And then while you're sleeping, the caffeine binds and then you wake up and the adenosine is all cleared out and you're like, you're ready to, you're ready to rock. So that was kind of an interesting one, although a little combative with the don't drink caffeine in the afternoon or you'll die. research that just came out.

JZ (18:36)
caffeine vines, yeah.

Yeah, you're golden.

Not a lot

of morning naps going on. Sort of frowned upon. Okay, so that's one technique was the caffeine nap that I think came right out of learning about the mechanisms of caffeine. What are some of the other practices or techniques that that you picked up as a result of this education?

Jake (18:53)
No, those are dangerous. Those are dangerous to my...

the one I think has made the biggest difference for me is not drinking caffeine first thing when I wake up. And this was, this was the thing that started the conversation with Ryan in the first place. Why are you not drinking coffee with us? You love coffee. What's wrong with you?

JZ (19:17)
Yeah, yep, it's huge.

Totally.

It's the one that when we tell people about it, it's right up there with uninstall all the distracting apps from your phone. People are just like, you're crazy. Wake up and not drink coffee right away. Come on. Yeah. If you're a coffee drinker, right? People who don't drink coffee or whatever, I don't understand them, but fine. If you are a coffee drinker and you contemplate waking up and not having coffee right away, it sounds crazy, right?

Jake (19:34)
You're crazy.

Why would I want to do that to myself?

You

It does. It's what a joy to wake up to smell the coffee. Like literally it's a saying wake up and smell the coffee. And you know, you get to do that. And then to drink the coffee and to get that, that burst right away. It's so joyful. Why rob yourself of that joy? What was wrong with Ryan? I couldn't get it. But then he explained that it's because when you wake up, cortisol will naturally, your body will produce cortisol to help you become alert in the morning. And.

JZ (19:58)
it's such a ritual. Yeah. Yep.

Yep.

Jake (20:23)
That cortisol wave is going to happen. And it's kind of like a free cup of coffee. And so if you let your body do its own thing, you're not prompting more adenosine production, right? So if you always have, if I was always having coffee first thing, I'm just telling my body to produce, Hey, like I'm blocking the receptors. I'm telling my body, make me more groggy in the morning. I'm just making it more painful to wake up. And I'm like,

JZ (20:29)
Right.

Interesting,

Jake (20:52)
Basically stealing the thunder of the, body's natural wake up, which is going to be kind of like a cup of coffee anyway. And if you are starting to get into the period of your life, or if you're already there, whatever, where you're more sensitive to caffeine, I also started to realize I only have so many cups I can have in a day and it's, it's not very many. And so if I, if I use one immediately, I've used up one of my tokens and I always think about.

JZ (21:12)
Yeah, tragically.

Jake (21:22)
playing Mario Kart and if you get a turbo mushroom in Mario Kart, you want to use it on a straightaway. You want to use it at the best time possible. And if I use it up right off the bat, I'm just going to make myself groggy or tomorrow. It's not really going to provide a bump over what cortisol would do for me anyway. And now I can't use it later in the day. I start to feel over coffeeed, over caffeinated, and it makes my energy quality in the morning lower. So that one has been the number one.

JZ (21:25)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. I resisted that one for a very long time. And then I only started doing it last year and it was, it wasn't planned. I had gotten sick. so I didn't, I didn't feel like drinking coffee at all for like a little while. And so I had become accustomed to waking up without coffee, without caffeine. And then when I was ready to drink coffee again, I was like, this is a golden opportunity to try the delayed.

Jake (21:52)
great coffee hack.

JZ (22:17)
first cup. And it also gave me an opportunity to reduce like my overall intake because I had sort of reset to, to no caffeine. it was actually right around the time I visited you on, on Orcus. if you noticed any changes in my energy, that was, that was why. But I switched, this was around like May of last year, April, May, I switched to wait until at least

Jake (22:22)
Yeah.

Hahaha

JZ (22:41)
an hour to 90 minutes after I wake up, then have the first cup. I sort of re-baselined to one and a half cups in the morning, usually like one around like 8.39 and then a half cup around like 10, 10.30. So I, yeah, and it's great. It's honestly, it's like, it does make a huge difference.

Jake (23:02)
Yeah. And that's the magic window. It's I think 60 to 90 minutes lets you get the, get the cortisol going. it is a big difference but it's, but it just doesn't sound, it just doesn't sound right. So that's, that's a, that's a counterintuitive one for sure. But, but very powerful. So, let's talk about how you make coffee. Cause I think a lot of the fun

JZ (23:24)
You

Jake (23:25)
in this

is how you make it. But there's also, you know, that can be a bit of, it can get into what coffee does for you, because you can have a lot of control. If you're making it yourself, you can control strength and so forth. So what do you do?

JZ (23:38)
These days I have a very boring coffee setup, which is I have a coffee maker. It's the OXO coffee machine. I'll just share my screen real quick and show you. Yeah.

Jake (23:47)
Yeah, let's take a look at this.

JZ (23:48)
So is the machine you can even see in is, have my Amazon page pulled up for, for the Oxxo coffee maker. It's called the Oxxo brew nine cup coffee maker. I'll link to it, but you can see a banner on top of says last purchased March 27th, 2016. So yeah, exactly. Yeah. I bought this machine when we lived in San Francisco.

Jake (24:02)
Well, it looks like it's worked for you for almost a decade. That's great.

JZ (24:06)
And then yeah, started using it when we moved to Milwaukee. I've been using it ever I probably around the time I moved to San Francisco and became sort of exposed to coffee culture, kind of a third wave coffee, you know, really a focus on craftsmanship and attention to detail and really sort of manual processes that are designed to make coffee that

just as fresh as possible, tastes as good as possible. I became exposed to those things after moving to San Francisco. And for a long time, I would grind coffee beans and then use like one of those little pour over cone things. I've never seen those, like a plastic cone with a filter that drops in. This is living in our small apartment in San Francisco. We just put water on the stove.

Jake (24:48)
Yeah, yeah, of course.

JZ (24:57)
heat it up, then pour the water over the coffee grounds in the filter in the cone. And I really liked that. I liked the ritual of it. But more importantly, I liked the quality of the coffee that it produced. And when I learned about this machine, there are now there are other machines like this one that are similar. But when I learned about it, I was really excited because it essentially it replicates that process. So I still grind the beans myself.

So and measure them out, you like you said, I can adjust the dosage a little bit, you know, if I want it to be less caffeinated, less strong, can use use less beans. But this machine, it does some things with timing so that it doesn't just like start dripping the water immediately. It like does it in a couple of waves that help produce higher quality coffee. And it also doesn't just have like a single if you look inside of it, it doesn't just have like a single spout for the water to come out. It has sort of like a

Like a mini shower head, you you sort of imagine like in your shower where like the water kind of like does this. like, it's like a tiny little one inside the coffee maker. so that the grounds get evenly saturated with water. I replaced myself with like a coffee robot. It was like automation, rudimentary automation, but, but to me, this was like a really good, good blend. And then it also final, final note on this thing is it has a, an insulated.

carafe instead of like, if you think of the old school Mr. Coffee Machine and you have like the glass thing on the little hot plate, that just results in like burned coffee. This is an insulated carafe. So the coffee stays hot for a couple of hours until that 10 o'clock, 10.30 half cup that I have, but with the convenience of an automated machine.

Jake (26:17)
Thanks.

Yeah.

Well this reminds me of, I'll share my screen now, Mocha Master. Are you familiar with the Mocha Master?

JZ (26:43)
Yeah, totally.

was one of the first, I think that machine came out around the same time as this one. That was one of the first machines that sort of replicated or recreated the hand pour experience at home.

Jake (26:55)
Yeah, and I associate this with Scandinavia. I don't know if that's right, this is kind of the more, know, gosh, I wonder what year this is from. It looks 60s or 70s to me in terms of the original design of this. I don't know if that's right.

JZ (27:01)
interesting.

wow. Do

you think it came out that long ago?

Jake (27:16)
I do, this is the actual company, don't know if they, 1968.

JZ (27:20)
Yeah, we need like the history.

That is crazy. Wow. Wow. Interesting.

Jake (27:26)
Yeah.

Gerard C. Smith. So there, yeah. Nice one, Gerard. I mean, look at him there. He's okay. He does. He does. He's enjoying that coffee. So it's, it's lovely. The idea that you don't have to pour it over yourself. this pour over setup was.

JZ (27:29)
Wow. Thanks Jerry. Yeah, really ahead of his time. Yeah, he looks quite happy.

Jake (27:49)
my main way to make coffee for a long time. And then we, for a while Chemex, but then just the little ceramic thing that goes on the mug and put in the paper filter and pour it over with hot water. Which I think is great. That's a great way to make coffee. You really get to taste the flavor well. We recently got a...

JZ (27:55)
Did you use the Chemex, right?

Jake (28:16)
I'm not even going to say we, this was, this was me. went rogue here. was told not to do this and I did it anyway.

JZ (28:23)
Wow, you

made an unauthorized household decision.

Jake (28:26)
unauthorized household decision,

which was to purchase this Breville espresso maker. It was, was prime days. So you can see that I purchased this, just October 9th, that my mom's birthday. That's a, that's a guy who's selfish on my mom's birthday. I purchased a coffee maker for myself, but I also, I also gave her a gift.

JZ (28:32)
Yeah.

October 9th, the day that shall live in infamy.

If you're

on audio where Jake's sharing his screen, he's got the Breville BES870XL espresso machine pulled up. He ordered it from Amazon. He purchased it on October 9th, 2020.

Jake (28:58)
Yes,

2024. And here it is zoomed in. The thing about this, it's got the grinder built in, which is, I mean, there's a lot of failure points for this. I don't know how long it's going to last. pretty good luck with Breville stuff in the past, but there are a lot of potential failure points because it grinds the coffee. It is also the espresso maker. also like steams milk if you're so inclined. And what is lovely about

JZ (29:12)
Yeah.

Jake (29:26)
espresso is it's just a bit faster as the name implies. Uh, and, I do love the taste of espresso. Yeah. So if you're making coffee then with a scale, so we'll measure the beans every time before we won't just keep beans in the hopper up here. We've got a scale off to the side. Not the animals. No. And the nice thing there too, is that you can dose the amount of caffeine, you know, if you have decaf beans and caffeinated beans. And so I'll just sort of like.

JZ (29:34)
Yeah, me too.

You're not animals.

Jake (29:55)
Get the, get the split that I want.

So that's a good system.

JZ (29:57)
to tell you about the, the embarrassing

recent change that, just, discredits everything that I've been saying about coffee, which is that, a couple, maybe a year and a half ago, I started a new workout routine, which is that on Tuesday and Friday mornings, I go to the gym. have a trainer that I work with. I go pretty early. I have to be there at six 30. And, so I, you know, I never would have, I could never have imagined.

Jake (30:05)
Thank

JZ (30:25)
doing this, but I now set up the coffee the night before. So I grind the beans the night before. I use the Oxo machine. has a timer setting so you can program it and say, start brewing at 5.30. So it's ready for me when I wake up. And on those days, I do drink coffee right away in the morning. But I have adopted a mindset of knowing that that's like a special treat because most days I

Jake (30:28)
Okay.

JZ (30:50)
I wait to have coffee. on Tuesdays and Fridays when I'm like, it's so dark out, it's so early, I'm awake, it's 5.30, I'm like, at least I get to drink coffee right away. Like what a great treat to have on this morning. So that's the latest change to the system.

Jake (31:05)
Does that mess with you on the other days that you're having coffee that early on those days? you feel like the day after your body's like, wait a second, I want it,

JZ (31:13)
think it's okay. Basically on Tuesday and Friday, feel different. But it could be because I wake up at 530. It could be because I go to the gym and lift weights. It could be because I haven't coffee. There's too many variables. But Tuesday and Friday are different days, energy-wise, body-wise, for whatever reason.

Jake (31:34)
Yeah.

Well, to, get up, be out of the house and at the gym at six 30 and your body ready to lift weights. I mean, to do that without coffee, you'd just be a, uh, you know, masochist, right? Like that's, uh, yeah. Well, well, I, I don't know. I think we've covered like everything there is to know about coffee pretty much today. I don't think so. I think there's probably going to have to be part two.

JZ (31:48)
Yes, I'm sort of freak of nature.

Yeah. Ryan's probably listening to

this, just cursing at his monitor. They got everything wrong.

Jake (32:04)
Oh yeah, yeah. It's like fools. Uh, you scratch the surface,

you got it all wrong. We'll, we'll probably do a part two of this at some point. I mean, I love caffeine. So, do you have any recommendations for people coffee related or, or otherwise?

JZ (32:14)
That's true.

I do have one. I finally finished reading Against the Gods, which was the book about risk. I was reading it before bed. I think I told you this. I was reading it before bed, which is a lovely routine, but it's sort of a thinky book to read only 10 to 15 pages at a time and then try to fall asleep, regardless of my caffeine habits. So I finished that one and I started a couple of new books, but the one I'm going to recommend is a book called

Jake (32:21)
yeah.

Yeah.

JZ (32:47)
Desk Bound and it is written by a physical therapist who I have followed on the internet for a long time named Kelly Sterrett. And hey, I should, you know, I should pull this up on Amazon while we're doing it.

Jake (32:59)
Yeah, sure.

JZ (33:00)
I first became aware of this book maybe 10 years ago when there was a bunch of like research that came out about the perils of sitting. And I remember seeing this book and I was like, okay, okay, I guess it came out in 2016. So maybe I heard about it eight years ago. was like, that seems like some information I should have, but I'm not going to read a whole book And more recently, I've been struggling with some

Jake (33:09)
you

JZ (33:23)
some back and hip issues that I think are at least in part because, you know, I do sit. You know, try to stand a fair amount. I try to move around, but I've been reading this book and it's really good. The thing I really like about it is that they explain the mechanics of why your body reacts the way it does when you sit a lot. And they have a lot of diagrams and

Like I've had these things explained to me verbally by physical therapists and trainers and massage therapists, but to have it in a book with pictures that I can like, I can go back to, can study, can reread, I can like look at, I just find really helpful. yeah, Deskbound by Kelly Starrett and Glenn Cordoza.

Jake (34:04)
cover has got like a person sitting, you know, and it looks like kind of a scan of the body. it's, I mean, it's a little intense, but the, there is something there with like, it's got some sort of red blobs highlighted in the body in a way that looks like it's from a scan of some kind. And I look at those and I just think, God, here I am sitting, looking at this. probably taking years off of my life.

JZ (34:14)
Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah,

guess probably part of why I didn't read it in the first place is like the cover is like too scary. I don't want anything to do with that.

Jake (34:34)
It's scary. It's a little, it's a little scary. It sort of looks like

if you said desk bound by Stephen King, if you just replaced Dr. Kelly's stare at with Stephen King, I'd be like, it's one of his early works. You know, probably a little bit of a, sci-fi angle, like the running man or since a Richard Bachman book. that's a, yeah. Well, well, that sounds, I look forward to a, a summary.

JZ (34:41)
Right.

Yeah

Yeah.

Jake (34:59)
of that, on the future episode that makes me feel bad. I don't know. I might. just, I for a long time would use a standing desk and alternate between the two. And I, I found it very difficult to do deeper work, like writing work when I was standing. And so I kind of went away from it, but maybe I, maybe I'm just being lazy.

JZ (35:01)
That's your way of saying you're not going to read it. There's zero chance you'll read it. You look forward to my summary.

Yeah.

Jake (35:25)
That's also possible that I like came out invented that explanation to allow myself to be lazy. So yeah, I'm curious.

JZ (35:30)
I

also know that you, just because I know about your life, I know that you move a lot. You have dogs, you walk the dogs in the woods, you live on a farm, so there's stuff to do. You are probably doing some other good things to counteract the effects of sitting, I would imagine.

Jake (35:48)
Yeah, maybe,

but you know, and I'm fidgety. That's helpful. I'm fidgety, I do, but I, yeah, but I do, you know, in a day it's a lot of sitting and if you're, yeah, have calls or something, it can be, yeah, I don't know. But I'll think about that. I'll recommend a coffee. I'll recommend the Breville coffee maker. I do think that's been nice and has so far just worked terrifically. Although it took a little bit of time to dial in and figure out the pressure, the grind setting. You got to turn the dial so it.

JZ (35:52)
Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Sure.

Jake (36:18)
You're going to waste a lot of coffee at first getting it to work right. And then the payoff comes. I'm also going to recommend a coffee company called Boone Boona B O O N B O O N A. They're a coffee company based in Seattle and just really terrific coffee. And they'll ship it to your house. They'll ship the beans to your house. Great stuff. So that's we've tried a lot of different coffee and that's been our favorite. but that's all I got.

JZ (36:46)
Great, me too. Thanks for listening. This has been episode 14, Jake and Jay-Z. We'll see you next week. Thanks everyone.

Jake (36:48)
All right. Yeah.

Bye.