A Journey Through the CAST Handbook: How Not to Cry Over Spilt Coffee

Previous: Introduction

So there I was...

...in the kitchen.

It's a lazy Saturday morning, I'm the only one up, and it's time to make coffee.

My machine (not depicted in the cover photo) has an integrated burr grinder, and the "grind chute" needs occasional maintenance, including clearing out old, packed grounds. I had the kitchen to myself, and it was as good a time as any, so I proceeded to do the dismantling of the parts necessary for access.

A few minutes later, the chute is clean as a whistle, and it's time to brew up a batch! I put the water in, top up the bean hopper, close everything up, and push the "GO" button (it's technically an On/Off button...but "GO button" sounds better).

The machine proceeds to beep at me incessantly, whining that "something's wrong...fix it" with the urgency of an 18-month old who can't formulate a sentence to tell you what's actually wrong. It dawns on me that I hadn't replaced the filter holder lid, a contraption with moving parts that for some reason needs more than one orifice to complete its purpose. No problem, I had rinsed it and set it aside while chute cleaning, and after replacing it atop the filter holder, no more complaining from the toddler.

I go on with prepping a modest breakfast, and soon the coffee machine is making its final steamy sighs signaling the water has all been boiled and the brew is complete. I turn around...

...to a coffee grind massacre. Dark, pulpy piles of bean mulch have bled from the machine, onto the counter, onto the floor. Halloween was Monday, but this scene would have been right at home in a neighborhood horror house in between the spaghetti brains and peeled grape eyeballs.

No panic, but after mopping and sweeping up the carnage, it finally struck me what had happened.

It is my technique, when chute clearing, to keep the old grounds in the filter holder to catch the chute droppings, and thereby feed two birds with one scone (yes, that means I often leave the grounds in the machine until the next morning; no, it's not a problem, that's what the scalding water is for, to kill the germs!).

In my morning mind, I had left the old grounds in, along with the chute droppings, and when I mashed the "GO" button, *fresh* grounds were rained down on the fertile soil of yesterday's grounds, and the last weeks' chute droppings, overflowing the filter, and causing a massive hemorrhage of high-grown, hand-picked Arabica.

So, naturally, I thought of the CAST Handbook.

Instead of diving into a massive analysis of the 1984 B-1 accident, as referenced in the Introduction article, here was a perfect accident to apply my first CAST analysis!

The next several articles will take us through the handbook, with my coffee accident as a concrete, simple example.

Next: Learning From Tragedy