Tasty measurements

Coffee is engrossing, and is of utter passion and interest to many people. What I feel separates coffee in respect to competition, and how we collate amongst each other about coffee, is that it's entirely subjective. While taste is foremost relevant, and the other somewhat distracting effects yielded along with coffee (like caffeine!), there must be some system in order to create comparison and measurement. To measure coffee solely by the experience through flavor and aroma is great and all, but it's just not enough. While measuring a brew's total dissolved solids has no assurance of taste or flavor, it does however provide consistency and a method of communication. Communication to understand and allow different outcomes and why they might take place, and also to reduce the guess work and be able to properly discuss and relay information with each other. Replacing something as intimate and personal as taste with numbers and measurement is not exactly what is happening, but instead is a method to refine and purify the ambiguity of why certain results are produced from specific variables and parameters. Although a cup of coffee’s tds turns out to be 1.32%, and is not a guarantee of a good cup - yet I might find out after brewing and testing multiple cups that I far more enjoy coffees brewed in the range of 1.30% rather then 1.40%, and this is useful information. 

Shows the brewing process cut into slices -
the times are displayed underneath. 

As humans, we seem to enjoy competing with one another. I can brew a cup and think mine tastes fantastic, and then Jose can brew another cup and think his tastes better. By creating standards we can actually compare each other's brew with more then just our subjective and opinion based taste buds. Whoever is actually better must be debatable, and is that really of importance anyhow? As arduous as it can be to admit, but there was definitely a time in my life where I did indeed dump an ounce of half & half into my coffee - my dark, over roasted, coffee. I thought I enjoyed it brewed dense and strong, and in fact I assuredly did enjoy it. I recall visiting the SWRBC when it came to Santa Cruz with Jose, and trying my first cup of what was considered properly treated and well extracted coffee. I thought it was drastically weak, and there was such an intensely present sour acidity. What I knew is that it tasted like nothing I had ever previously experienced, and although I didn't necessarily want to experience more - I did want to find out why this was the standard. It was quite distressing, trying to organize my conflicting thoughts of what the perfect cup of coffee was. Jose was actually the first person to present this to me, and it truly threw us for a loop. We couldn't determine what we enjoyed about coffee, nor what was evidently unpleasant. We tripped over this for months before we had realized that the fierce, bright acidity that was once virtually unbearable - was the thing we now craved and looked for in coffee. 
The bewildering part is whether this happened because coffee is truly better this way (and if that is even a fair notion to present as true), or because we changed our expectations of coffee, because of what other people considered superior, or some other possible third thing. I do know that I enjoy coffee brewed and roasted similar to SCAA standards, but what is difficult is the reason why I do. I feel a vast amount of the people that enjoy coffee prefer consistency and assurance in what they already know. It's as if there is a fear of purity, and that uniting a well known quality like sugar is an easy solution to disclose the unsettling thought of an uncharted, and unexplored area. Why not take an adventure, who knows, you might end up in a place that is lovely and enchanted. The hindrance on the other hand is, well, you might not like it. You might not like the new single origin from Kenya, but that shouldn’t mean to turn your back away from anything else new. 
Despite a possible side track - I think the measurement of coffee and espresso is of utmost value and utility. Although I'm not always 100% sure whether my coffee is over extracted, under extracted, or both over and under, but I can assuredly find out, and hint towards the causes and reasons why.