An ode to coffee…
Not an ode exactly. I can’t write good poetry, so my odes are just blog posts, a poor substitute for those who love Grecian urns and the like. This post is indirectly about urns, though, in the form of receptacles found in offices usually containing bad, old, and cold coffee. When I had a day job, I fortunately had a physicist colleague who believed in a good cup of coffee, an amateur barista, if you will. The fact that Starbucks is raising the price of their coffee products by 1% made me reconsider our and the whole world’s love affair with coffee. I come not to bury Starbucks but to praise coffee. And I generally wonder: what the hell would we do without it!
Coffee is a drug, although a benign one. We use it, often in social contexts, to get a fix of caffeine, or as lonely addicts just trying to stay alert. These are legitimate excuses for consuming a wonderful beverage. College kids tossing down those energy drinks don’t know what they’re missing. Drunks using coffee to cure a hangover don’t either—you have to have some mental alertness to start with in order to savor this wondrous brew. Coffee is a stimulant, but also contains all sorts of things that the docs say are good for you, depending on the latest study on coffee from the New England Journal of Medicine.
Coffee’s addictive powers are socially acceptable. If you’re a regular coffee drinker, just try to stop. Maybe you have. It’s acidic, although you can buy acid-free versions (they don’t do it for me). I’m like my character, NYPD homicide detective Rollie Castilblanco—if I feel a bit acidy after my two cups of morning java, I pop two Tums and go on with my writing life (hence the title, Pop Two Antacids and Have Some Java, my anthology containing short stories about Castilblanco and his partner, Dao-Ming Chen, cases that didn’t quite make it to novel length).
Like Algebra, that infernal subject many teens curse and struggle with, coffee came from the Arabs. I’ve often thought that a coffee scarcity would be more stressing on the West than an oil scarcity. And, just like oil, there is a coffee growers’ organization that tries to control java prices. Anyway, the earliest real evidence for coffee growing and drinking occurred in the Sufi monasteries of Yemen—Sufi, mind you, not Sunni or Shi’ite. The Sufis tend to be a bit more peaceful—hard to imagine it’s due to coffee drinking, though. Coffee’s spread to Europe came later, but, in the 16th century, social networking was done in coffee houses, precursors to our modern and overly expensive establishments.
I’ve always wondered how these ancient food and beverages were discovered. Coffee, yoghurt, chocolate, and so forth are all processed in a complicated manner. Maybe those Sufi holy men were just looking for something, anything, to get them through the boredom of monastery life. They chose coffee. Irish monks chose beer and ale. I’m indebted to both, but I’m not going to get into which religious group contributed more to Western civilization. To me, these are all essential beverages that make civilization possible (wine is another, of course).
When I was in Colombia, one of my best friends and fellow physicist headed up the R&D division of the National Coffee Growers Laboratory. What an ideal job! They had all kinds of fancy equipment and staff completely dedicated to studying coffee. This was completely understandable—coffee is Colombia’s number one legal crop. The flower industry is number two. (Note that I say “legal”—coffee and flowers, fortunately, rise above geopolitics and the influence of illegal industries on them.)
Colombian coffee is excellent coffee, even in Colombia. Everyone told me there that the “good stuff” is exported. I shudder to imagine that this “good stuff” ends up in instant coffee or in some coffee house’s innocuous breakfast blend, but that’s a cross I have to carry. There are two species of coffee, my friend told me—Coffea arabica and Coffea robusta. The first has many varieties, so caveat emptor (lots of Latin today). Colombian is often considered a variety, but Maragogype, Caturra, Typica, and Bourbon varieties are all grown in that country. That brings us to the other ingredient necessary for making an excellent cup of coffee—the growing environment.
Colombia is one of the best places in the world, if not the best, for growing coffee. Colombian coffee is heavy in body and very aromatic. You can make it wicked strong and it never seems to be bitter. Compare Colombian Typica with Brazilian—that difference is the growing environment. That environment is determined by those Andean slopes with their plentiful sun and gentle rains. As you come over the mountains from Bogotá and drive down into that coffee-growing region, that wonderful coffee perfume is wafted to you by those semi-tropical breezes. It is hot and sunny as you descend in elevation. I always thought that the shade contributed by the plantain trees on the Colombian plantations was necessary too, but in Kauai (State of Hawaii), I saw Arabica bushes that needed no shade, and the coffee there was excellent too.
There are many excellent coffees, in fact. At coffee houses like Peets and Starbucks, for example, you can sample coffees from all over the world and enjoy finding your favorites. The latter specializes in those mocha whatevers with lots of sugar, whipped cream, and cherries. These are for people more interested in a sugar high than a caffeine high. But that’s another key issue for me. It takes nature and much human help to produce that Colombian coffee. Why destroy it with flavorings and toppings? If you need flavors and a sugar high, go to an ice cream shop, please! Don’t let the capitalist moguls destroy your coffee pleasure!
In particular, with that 1% Starbucks raise you’re paying a nickel more for a $5 coffee-flavored something-or-other, maybe more with tax. That doesn’t sound like much, but add them all together and that’s quite a few nickels you’re paying someone to destroy a good cup of java (by the way, that name comes from the island of Java of Indonesia, historically one of the big coffee producers in the world). Starbucks, in fact, has been so focused on pleasing everyone’s sweet tooth that they no longer make anything resembling a good cup of coffee. I’ve always said that it tastes like burnt toast, and their recent offering of a “blonde” version tastes like a watered-down version of burnt toast.
The best cup of coffee is often found only in the best restaurants and—you guessed it—at home. But you can’t get it at home using those Keurig-type toys—forget it! You have to work at it a bit. There’s a whole science to it. I was pleasantly surprised on Father’s Day when our local jazz club, Trumpets, served my Jameson’s in a brandy sniffer. It’s simple science to know how to serve an Irish whiskey. It’s also simple science to know how to brew a good cup of coffee. Anyone can learn them.
The one thing I would miss most in the morning if stranded alone on a desert island would be that first cup of coffee or that cup after a good meal (that might be difficult to obtain on a desert island, of course). The second would be writing. They are two very civilized things I do. Neither one makes me any money, but they bring enjoyment to my life. And that, dear readers, ends my ode to coffee.
And so it goes….
[If you enjoyed this post, please support this blog: buy, read, and review some of my books.]
