I know the inverted methods seem cool and bunch of people won the championship with it, but let's be honest. There's plenty of recipes for the normal method that are just as good. And Hoffman's simplified method is good enough that at least for me it's not worth complicating things further.

The only thing I do differently is to let it infuse for 5-ish minutes instead of the recommended 2 and put like 15-17g of coffee instead of 11-12. Unless I have some expensive beans, in which case I make one batch with higher amount and one with less and see if the difference is worth it. If it's not, I just use 11 to enjoy it for longer.

And yeah, as a pastry cook by trade I too thought at first that playing it by ear and not following the recipe to the letter was blasphemy. But I realized I was just introducing unnecessary stress to the whole process.

I take an original to work with a KINGrinder P2 nested inside it... it would be difficult to get a more compact combo of coffee maker AND grinder.

My technique is roughly what James Hoffmann outlined on his channel - standard orientation, but slipping the plunger in to hold the coffee up via vacuum.

It's a little fiddly on the job, but it's worth it when I taste that delicious brew.