Evernote for Enthusiasts, Hobbyists and Other Excitable “ists”

I don’t have many hobbies that don’t involve a keyboard, but coffee is one of them. I freaking love coffee. I’ve been roasting my own at home for a few years now and, while I’m certainly not an expert, I’m definitely what a local news anchor would call an “enthusiast”.

Many hobbies involve repetition in some way. If you’re a big chess gal, you probably play multiple games of chess. If you enjoy making authentic Indian food, chances are you’ve taken a crack at Chicken Curry more than once. To the people who enjoy making artisanal jewelry out of the rusty exhaust manifolds you scavenge from junkyards, you’re probably hoping to offer a collection instead of a single piece. Roasting coffee ain’t no different.

A few days ago, I took possession of a new coffee roaster since, sadly, my old one suffered some trauma during our move to a new place late last year and subsequently took the dirt nap. While just having fresh, awesome coffee for a fraction of what most people pay is the primary reason for home roasting, I also wanted to keep better tabs on what I’d roasted, the specific steps I took for a particular roast and how the coffee ended up tasting in the end. The goal is to develop a combination roasting log and recipe book. There are many, many different types of coffee from many regions around the world, so I wanted to be able to look back through my log and see if I’d roasted a particular bean before and how it turned out.

What better tool for the job than Evernote, I ask you? None, that’s what, Jack.

So, I created my Coffee Roasting notebook in Evernote. Each note represents an individual roast and, thus far, contains the specific roaster settings, the timings of the various cracks and a photo or two of the finished product. Different darkness levels of coffee are defined using this scale (which, as luck would have it, also explains that cracking business I mentioned in the previous sentence).

The really cool part? I’ve made this notebook public so anybody who wants to can see what I’ve been roasting and probably get a pretty good idea what I’m drinking during a given week.

So what the hell does this have to do with you, Mr. Coffee Sucks Please Pass the Green Tea? Glad you asked.

I’m pretty sure that this little system would work for all sorts of different hobbies and hobbyists. For example:

• The guy who loves baking could keep a running log of the various recipes for red velvet cupcakes he’s attempted and share them with his family, including a few sentences about what went right or wrong.
• The young lady who has a penchant for online gambling could create a note after each poker session she plays, recording wins and losses and, probably more importantly, notes about specific players. For example, knowing who the big fish at the table is who will call down any bet with any two cards in the freaking deck would be a nice bit of data. If she’s got friends in the poker world who play on the same site she does, this could be valuable information. If not, it will still be of interest down the road (hint: search your Poker notebook for a player’s screen name when you sit down to see if you’ve encountered them before and what type of player they are).
• The big, stubbly dude who spends his weekends yanking Blue Fin tuna out of the ocean would probably enjoy having a growing record of his catches, their weights and how they tasted with drawn butter and a little sautéed garlic. A few specially placed photos would also help ensure that the notable fish you landed didn’t quietly increase in size inside his head over the years.

Hell, even you tea people could probably find a way to make use of this to keep track of your cute little leafy beverages if you wanted to. Maybe include some scone recipes and photos of your favorite cucumber finger sandwiches, I dunno.

I’m obviously not the first guy to come up with this little scheme and I’d love to hear from anybody who has used Evernote for this kind of thing. Leave a comment below if you’ve made this brand of magic before, or if you have a cool theoretical use case that your fellow nerds might enjoy.

Oh, and if you want to learn more about Evernote and how frickin’ sweet it is, I made a thing that may interest you.

You can check out my coffee roasting notebook here — and apologies if it’s a little lean, I just had this little epiphany a few days ago :)

Tea people: totally kidding. I like tea.

Not really, you guys are weird.

Photo by oceandesetoiles