Took exactly 47 days to admit my cheap grinder was ruining my coffee
Kept blaming my beans or my pour technique for sour cups, then borrowed a friend's $200 grinder and hit the same brew recipe. That 47 days of stubbornness cost me a lot of bad morning coffee, so now I'm pretty sure burr size matters more than I ever gave it credit for. What number of bad cups finally pushed anyone else to upgrade their gear?
47 days of bad coffee is the same thing as when I spent a whole summer blaming my oven for burnt cookies before someone told me my baking sheet was warped. Same story everywhere, we always point at the fancy thing first and ignore the cheap tool underneath.