The Day I Bought a Used BALMUDA The Brew for About $240

When you start buying coffee gear, you always begin by saying the same thing: should this not be enough? I did too. I spent years with a Fellow Stagg EKG, and a simple drip bag already felt good enough. Even after I bought a glass Hario V60 dripper, the feeling did not change much. I liked the slow act of pouring water by hand, and I liked the smell of beans rising from the dripper.

But liking something and doing it often are not quite the same thing. I did like hand-poured coffee, but I did not want to make it that way every time. Mornings make that especially clear. Boiling water, folding a filter, grinding beans, starting a timer, and paying attention to the stream of water can be pleasant on some days. On other days, it is just a chore. There are days when I want coffee, but I do not have the heart to love the whole process of making coffee.

Then one day, someone I know mentioned the BALMUDA The Brew. He said it was one of the coffee products he had bought and was still using with real satisfaction. It looked like BALMUDA, the flavor was more stable than he expected, and above all, it was convenient in the morning. That sentence was dangerous. “Convenient in the morning” is far too good an excuse for buying coffee gear.

I Opened Karrot Right There

The moment when a person buys something is usually not very long. We talk as if we thought about it for a long time, but often our mind has already tilted and is only waiting for the last excuse. That day, his recommendation became my last excuse. While I was still sitting there, I opened Karrot, the Korean secondhand marketplace, and found a BALMUDA The Brew that looked to be in decent condition.

The price was 330,000 KRW, about US$240. Compared with the price of a new unit, it looked pretty reasonable. Of course, buying a used coffee machine comes with some uneasiness. Machines that handle water can feel a little questionable, and how the previous owner maintained it matters. Still, it looked clean in the photos, and the listing seemed believable enough. More than anything, my mind had already gone there that day.

I ended up buying it that evening. Looking back now, that was the first turning point in the growth of my home coffee setup. Until then, I was more or less “someone who had moved a little beyond drip bags.” From that point on, I became “someone who had brought in a machine.” The difference is larger than it sounds. Once a machine enters the house, coffee moves a little deeper into daily life.

One-Button Coffee

The thing I liked most when I first used the BALMUDA The Brew was not the taste, but the rhythm. Add water, add beans, press the button. Of course, it is not a machine that does absolutely everything. You still have to grind the beans, put in the filter, and clean up after drinking. Still, it removes the tension of hand-pouring. The stream of water cannot wobble because of me, and the extraction does not fall apart just because I get distracted for a moment.

At first, it felt almost like cheating. Can I say I like coffee while wanting to skip the hand-pouring process? After a few days, that thought disappeared quickly. A hobby cannot be loved at the same intensity every day. Some days I want to brew by hand. Some days I simply want a well-brewed cup of coffee. An automatic drip machine was a pretty good answer for the second kind of day.

The taste was better than I expected too. I would not call it an extraordinary specialty-coffee experience, and I would not say it replaces a cup made by a barista at a cafe. But for everyday coffee at home, it was more than good enough. In particular, it was more consistent than my own careless brewing. That matters. When my skill is still uneven, the machine is more diligent than I am.

When my skill is still uneven, the machine is more diligent than I am.

A Very BALMUDA Object

BALMUDA products always feel a little strange to me. If you look only at function, there may be similar or better products. That becomes even truer when you consider the price. But once you place one at home, it does not feel bad. There is the feeling of pressing the button, the way the water falls, and the atmosphere the product takes up. You could call that excessive, but I am quietly weak to this kind of thing.

The Brew was the same. When placed on one side of the kitchen, it looks less like a coffee machine and more like a small object. It is not intimidating like professional equipment, but it also does not feel light like a toy. In the morning, when I turn on the light, add water, and press the button, the mood of the house leans toward a cafe for a brief moment. Of course, five minutes later I am usually running out with a cup in my hand.

Still, calling it a very BALMUDA object includes both the good and the bad. It is pretty, it feels nice to use, and it has the atmosphere the brand is good at making. Put another way, it also means paying quite a bit for that atmosphere. That is why I am not sure I would have bought it new. If it had not been the used price of 330,000 KRW, about US$240, I probably would have hesitated longer.

Better Because I Bought It Used

Buying something used makes my feelings toward the object a little lighter. Expectations are lower than when I pay a lot for a new product, and there is the thought that I can send it on again if it does not fit me. The Brew was good in that sense too. I brought it in with the feeling that “at this price, it is worth trying,” and in the end I was satisfied with it for quite a while.

Of course, it is not perfect. It does not have the pleasure of hand-brewing. It can feel limiting for someone who wants to adjust recipes in detail. It may also be unsatisfying for people who like very strong coffee or want to tune extraction differently for each bean. And in the end, this machine still has to be cleaned. Coffee gear always leaves dishes behind at the end.

Even so, the reason I remember The Brew fondly is clear. It made me drink coffee. It was less a tool that made me study coffee and more a tool that made me drink coffee more often. It let me make a cup on busy mornings, and it let me drink coffee at home even on days when hand-brewing felt bothersome. For that, I think it was a good enough piece of gear.

It Would Have Been Nice If I Had Stopped There

The problem is that it did not end there. I could have simply used The Brew happily, but I watched more coffee videos, bought more beans, and heard more talk about extraction. My eyes started drifting sideways again. I became curious about espresso machines, then heard that grinders were important, and eventually, as in the post I wrote yesterday, the equipment suddenly multiplied.

Still, the feeling The Brew gave me as my first coffee machine remains fairly clear. The convenience of coffee coming down with one button. The stability of getting a decent result even when I am not doing it well myself. And the small satisfaction of having bought it used at a good price. These things are worth recording even after time has passed.

If someone asks whether I recommend this coffee gear, I am still a little careful. Everyone drinks coffee differently, and everyone has a different tolerance for inconvenience. But for me, the BALMUDA The Brew was “the thing that made me drink coffee more often at home.” The gear that made my coffee deeper is a separate story for later, but the gear that attached coffee to daily life was closer to this.

So the choice I made that day, bringing it home for 330,000 KRW, about US$240, still remains a pretty good one. Of course, if I include all the spending that followed, the story becomes a little more complicated. Coffee gear is always like that. It feels as if buying one thing will be the end, but strangely, that one thing leaves the door open for the next.