I started drinking at an early age…….I’m talking about coffee here by the way…….and I have to confess all we had at our house was Nescafe, that weird mud colored dust that we spooned into some boiling water. Tasted like shit and you had to add tons of milk and sugar to make it taste palatable. My mother would regularly go to coffee mornings in our village, where they would worship the brown powder and gossip all morning. It was her version of church.
Things changed once we went on holiday to France where we breakfasted in one of the many bars in the towns we passed through. A couple of older red nosed Frenchmen would be propping up the bar drinking vin ordinaire, which is an inexpensive table wine, but was better than most expensive wine available in England at that time. Croissants were fresher and tastier than anything imaginable and the coffee, well that was something to behold, something worth worshipping, certainly better than everyone’s favorite imaginary friend, Jesus. I was amazed at the complexity and size of the machine that made the coffee, usually made by Gaggia, which hissed and spat, while the patron turned handles and whirled around in a perfectly controlled ballet.
What caught my attention the most were the weird brown turds that the patron would load into the Gaggia machine, “what are those” I asked my mum, to which she replied “coffee beans dear”, “What the fuck” I said, why are we drinking that brown dusty shit at home, when this stuff smells so good” I didn’t actually swear like that, I actually never uttered a curse word in front of her, I left that to my sister, who was and still is the ultimate potty mouth. Makes for a better story though.
So that was my introduction to REAL coffee and having spent 5 years living in Spain drinking equally good stuff, I could never go back, and I looked down on others who insisted on adding dry brown powder to water and calling it coffee. Things started looking up when Starbucks came along and introduced us to coffee with exotic sounding names, filled with massively sugary ingredients, to basically mask the burnt shots they pulled from their espresso machines. Then things changed, espresso became evil, to some degree, the machines didn’t filter out the bad fats in coffee, something had to be done. Weighing, double filtering, buying beans from independent roasters, water at the perfect temperature, this was the new coffee love. Now, if I don’t make it myself I expect a perfect cup, no bitterness, and clean……yes clean, the new coffee buzzword, made for me by someone with a nose ring, dreads and wearing sandals made from coffee husks, who simply loves this wonderful bean.
Which brings me to work, where at every place I have worked the coffee tastes like shitty mud and is made by someone who drinks several cups a day and doesn’t seem to care, which is why I make my own, carefully, and take it to work, to enjoy while everyone else drinks the coffee equivalent of bat droppings………..yes I’m a coffee snob and I don’t care.