Partly inspired by Brad Feld’s recent blog post “My 2011 By The Numbers” and of course Nick Felton’s “Feltron Annual Reports” – for those who know me, I’m passionate about amazing “indie” coffee and I’m a personal data obsessed nerd.  Mix those two together and this is what you get.  Special thanks goes to my friend Malcolm Bastien for introducing me to Daytum

At last! After a full year (since January 2nd 2011) of painstakingly collecting and manually entering my personal data for stuff I found to be most important (one of them being coffee of course) into Daytum, I can tell a story through numbers – sheer and glorious data that I sliced and diced for my own interest and maybe even yours if you want to peek into my unhealthy obsession of personal data and coffee.

Through this data I’ve collected through Daytum’s web app, iPhone app and mobile web view as well as Mint.com’s web, iPhone and Android apps, I’ve been able to capture an almost 360 degree view for the 365 days of 2011 of my coffee tendencies.  From number of speciality coffee drinks I’ve had, the different types, the time between drinks and the amount spent.  Save for location data, which was a bit of an after thought after I deleted my Foursquare account.. but that’s another story.

Coffee numbers for 2011

In 2011, I’ve had 446 cups of coffee in all of its glorious forms, with my most popular drinks being the Americano at 161 cups, home brewed Aeropress at 140 cups and 42 cups of Cappuccino to round out the top three.

This year amounted to 1.22 cups of coffee per day, which isn’t as bad as some of my coffee enthusiast counterparts (looking at you Espresso Adventures and my professional barista counterparts.

In terms of precise time breakdown.. I’ve had a cup of coffee every 18 hours, 37 minutes and 57 seconds

Unfortunately, I’ve had about 21 cups of “Shit coffee” that accounted for 4.7% of my coffee consumption for 2011 because I was in dire need of crack coffee (insert Tim Horton’s, Starbucks, etc) and none of my indie coffee joint mainstays were within immediate walking distance.

One notable and “innovative” approach to coffee I discovered was from Mercury Espresso Bar’s “Coffee Pop”, which was a mix of Cold Drip Coffee and Eska Carbonated Spring Water.  It really has a refreshing kick of caffeine in the morning or on a hot summer afternoon.

For those who are wondering the “Godly Espresso” and “Godly Chemex” were my taste of this year’s 2011 Cup of Excellence Winner in Colombia from Arnulfo Leguizamo’s Primavera Farm, which scored an unmatched 94.05 points and fetched a record $45.10 per pound, which amounted to over $100,000 going straight back to the farmer in the auction.  The beans were roasted by Te Aro Coffee and George Howell’s Terroir Coffee.  Thank you to Andy’s (at Te Aro) team for roasting the delicious coffee and Matt at Mercury for hosting the blind tasting via Chemex brew method pitting Toronto’s very own Te Aro vs George Howell’s Terroir Coffee.  I’ll leave out who won the blind tasting

Coffee spending for 2011

Hot damn, I didn’t really anticipate this, but I spent close to $1000 on coffee alone!!   I don’t have any other comparison to other people’s coffee consumption habits, but (for me) that’s a lot of friggin’ money!  This excludes my “coffee gadgets” such as my Aeropress and Hario Hand Grinder.

Another insight, however, is that had it not been for buying my Aeropress, if I were to assume that each of the 141 Aeropress coffees I’ve made myself, that would’ve easily been an extra $423 alone (141 x $3 / cup average) had I bought Americanos in their place.

As for why Te Aro and Mercury take the lion’s share (78.8% – how’s that for Pareto’s Law by the way??) of my coffee expenditure, it was mostly because of geography cuz I live in the ‘hood… and because I believe Leslieville offers the best coffee in Toronto… Hands. Down

Or for those who like pretty graphs instead…

And a line by line breakdown of the year…

Next year I’ll aim for cutting my coffee expenses by 33% because $1000 is a lot of money spent on coffee.  Additionally, I’d like to add more rich location data with heatmaps of where I’m going for my coffee, use my Chemex a tad bit more, and to write more helpful articles on finding and making great coffee at a fraction of the price without sacrificing quality.

This is just a stepping stone in terms of investigating how personal data visualized intersects with goal setting.  My hypothesis is that by unearthing certain tendencies through sucking in data, aggregating in a visual format and giving the ability to slice and dice it in a multitude of ways can be meaningful and measurable can actually help increase the quality of our lives.

Well there ya have it folks.  My 2011 Coffee Year In Review