My parents weren’t coffee drinkers. I don’t even remember there being a coffee maker in the kitchen of my childhood. When we would visit my grandparents, sometimes coffee would be consumed, but that was the only time I would encounter it. Once or twice I was offered a sip and, like most kids, I didn’t care for it.
When I was a teenager, I got a job at a Chinese restaurant bussing tables and washing dishes. I was given unlimited access to the fountain drinks and it took me very little time to be burned out on sugary sodas. Instead, I started drinking tea and found it much more to my liking. Unbeknownst to me, I was setting myself up for becoming a coffee drinker.
My first cup of coffee was a bad one. I was 15 and hanging out with some older friends at a bachelor pad listening to records. Joe, the bachelor in question, had insanely hot tap water that would scald you coming directly from his kitchen tap and he used this water to make instant coffee using Folger’s Crystals or Sanka, Nescafe, or similar. Having recently become a tea drinker and wanting to appear cool to my older friends, I decided to start drinking coffee. I had no idea what good coffee was supposed to taste like but that didn’t matter. It felt grown up to drink it. My big brother Rhett didn’t like it. He thought it tasted like “hot water with dirt in it” and never drank coffee again in his entire life. I, on the other hand, became a regular consumer of the devil’s bean.
By my 20’s I was drinking coffee pretty much around the clock. I woke up, brewed coffee, and drank coffee all day long. Nothing fancy, just Eight O’Clock Bean or whatever coffee was on sale at the grocery store. I sometimes bought whole bean coffee but since I didn’t own a coffee grinder, I would use the grinder at the grocery store to grind it before I brought it home. I wasn’t terribly picky, coffee was coffee, as long as it was caffeinated. I liked it strong though. I routinely hit a Starbucks or a Caribou and had an espresso shot added to my dark roast. For some reason this didn’t seem to impact my ability to sleep. I have always slept like a rock even if I had a cup ten minutes before going to bed. If I didn’t have my coffee, however, I would have a splitting headache the next day as I went through caffeine withdrawal. It was around this time that I also started popping Excedrin on the daily, which would cure the headaches with a mix of Tylenol and caffeine.
In my late 20’s I took a trip to Jamaica and while I was there I tried Blue Mountain coffee and I was, frankly, astonished. There was so much depth, so much flavor, so much body, that I felt like I had never tasted coffee before. It was like my coffee drinking had been in black and white before and now it was in high definition color. I wanted to drink that coffee from then on but when I came back to the United States and discovered just how expensive Blue Mountain coffee was, well, that put an end to that. I couldn’t afford the high definition coffee, at least not in the quantities I was used to consuming.
I was an addict, not a connoisseur. Also, I was broke and getting divorced. Quality coffee would have to wait.
I did, however, make the decision to radically reduce my caffeine dependency. I did it the hard way, going cold turkey, and spent a couple of weeks feeling like I had been run over by a succession of very angry trucks. Once recovered I spent the next few years without caffeinated beverages and only drank terrible, sad, decaf coffee when I couldn’t get tea.
Once I felt like I was emotionally mature enough to handle drinking coffee in moderation again, I slowly re-engaged with it, having a cup here and a cup there but I generally kept my hot beverages to herbal teas. When I did partake of coffee, I tried to savor it and really enjoy it. I always had the memory of Jamaica in my mind and I continually hoped to find coffee that was close to that amazing experience. I found that Kona coffee from Hawaii was my favorite. It was full-bodied and chocolatey and had a flavor profile that was worth savoring, unlike most of the drech that was generally available.
My next major coffee experience involved another trip to a foreign country, this time Guatemala. I visited the Panajachel/Lago de Atitlan area in 2011 and stayed at a hotel called La Casa del Mundo where they served the local coffee, a rich and spectacular bean that was grown in volcanic soil. I visited a coffee plantation and saw the beans and the cherries on horseback. I was reminded just how much I loved coffee when it was at it’s best and my interest in exploring coffee was reignited.
In the years since, I have explored coffee from various parts of the world, taken to roasting my own coffee, and have read and learned more about coffee than I ever thought I wanted to know back when it was purely a stimulant. I still love Kona, Blue Mountain, and Guatemalan coffees, but I have also discovered coffees from other parts of the world and tried coffees at various combinations of roasts and preparation methods. Beyond standard drip I have played with Aeropress, french press, pour over, espresso, and vacuum siphon. I’ve had it Turkish style, Vietnamese style, and adorned or black in lots of variations. As I write this, I am roasting some monsoon-processed Malabar green coffee from India in my Gene Cafe home roaster.
If you are at all interested in taking up home roasting, you can do worse than picking up a Gene Cafe. It’s a reliable little machine, easy to operate, and I have been buying green coffee and roasting it for several years now. I haven’t crunched the numbers to see if it’s a cost savings versus buying my coffee pre-roasted, but the results are excellent and the roasting process is fun. I buy beans from Sweet Marias, Burman Coffee Traders, and other online green coffee sellers, usually in 5-20lb bags which are shipped to my home.
These days I still start my day with a grind, brew, and sip but if I can’t get the good stuff, I will pass on coffee with no headache or caffeine withdrawal symptoms. I am a coffee lover, but no longer a caffeine addict. I will close with this: my long relationship with coffee has taught me the value of savoring and exploring rather than just chugging. It has been a part of my personal growth in a way that other foods have not. Coffee has been for me a mindfulness tool, a focus tool, an addiction, and a pleasure, but rarely at the same time. I recommend to anyone who thinks they love coffee to avoid crappy K-cups, avoid mindlessly slamming down cups of cheap commodity coffee, and take some time to explore until you find the coffee that makes you stop and go “Whoa… I had no idea coffee could taste like that” and then slow down and work from there. Take notes, see what works with your palette, and give the wider world of coffee a chance. For something seemingly so straightforward and ubiquitous in the world, something found at every gas station and office watering hole, coffee has a surprising variety of flavors, aromas, and variations available that you will never encounter if you don’t look for them and you never know, you could be missing out on one of life’s great pleasures, even if you drink it every day.