Coffee: A love letter
Over the last few years, coffee has become a large part of who I am. To be honest, coffee has always been around me. The Gen-Z addiction to Starbucks, the SoCal resident’s love for Coffee Bean, and the general love for the smell of coffee are all things that resonate personally with me. Some of my earliest memories are of my parents making coffee in this old Cuisinart batch brewer and of my grandparents making the weakest batch of Folger’s coffee you could ever imagine. Coffee seemed to follow me around for 19 years just waiting for me to notice it.
As I grew older and began to solidify what I really enjoy, coffee decided to jump out and take the lead for a while. It seemed inevitable since I had always considered coffee to be interesting yet I never pulled the trigger to investigate it.
A great example of this was in 2018 while on a trip to Kona, Hawaii. I was lucky enough to get a tour of a coffee farm called “Hula Daddy” where they grow and roast their coffee on what used to be an 11-acre cow farm. The tour was excellent - it is something that I recommend to anyone, coffee drinker or not, to experience. And although I had made it to the Mecca of the Kona Coffee world, I still was clueless about what any of this information about the coffee fruit and the roasting process was. When the tour was over, we lingered to the on-site kitchen where about 30 different ways to make coffee were on display (intense foreshadowing happening right now). This kitchen had everything from your basic batch brewer to the epic Hario V60 to the powerful Chemex. They had emersion brewers (french press included), inverted/pressure brewers, the camp-favorite Aeropress, a percolator… I could go on and on. This was the first time I had ever seen coffee products displayed in this way. Nonetheless, I walked away from Hula Daddy with an espresso mug souvenir and the idea that coffee was actually pretty neat.
Having your “first” of anything cool in life is something you’re supposed to remember, right? Like your first car (my aunt’s 2002 Acura TLS named “The Pickle”), your first girlfriend (kudos to her for dealing with 15-year-old me and that awkward first kiss), your first job (Mister Softee of SoCal), and a few other firsts that will be left out of this because I am a man of class. My “coffee firsts” were no different than these. I will never forget the first time I saw someone make pour-over coffee. It was January 24, 2020, at around 6 PM. I was in the editing suite of Mark Needham before going to see Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon A Time In Hollywood” at the New Beverly Theatre in Los Angeles. Seeing how he poured water from a gooseneck kettle onto some grounds to create the same thing I had been drinking for years from a machine blew my mind. This singular moment - my “pour over first” - pushed me into the coffee world for real.
When COVID hit just a few months later, I finally pulled the trigger and began acquiring coffee products. I figured that since I had all that spare time, I could figure this whole coffee thing out once and for all.
My coffee venture began horribly. I purchased bad gear (I seriously bought a porcelain Le Creuset coffee cone that weighed more than a bag of coffee) simply because I didn’t know what I was doing and quite simply, I was too stubborn to seek help. Finally, I used my resources and went to the almighty YouTube search bar and typed in “Pour over coffee tutorial”. Out of the top three videos recommended, one was titled “The Ultimate V60 Technique” which prompted two thoughts in my head. The first being, “Who knew something related to coffee could be so cool sounding?” and, “What the hell is a V60?”
I quickly took to Amazon, purchased a Hario V60 cone and carafe set for $20 (which I still use today), and just used an old Pyrex and a microwave for heating up water. I started to brew every morning watching that James Hoffman video at the same time. The end result of these daily brews always varied, but I loved each second of it. By the time summer hit, I had a gooseneck kettle, a scale, a drawer full of filters, and a new passion for coffee that was unstoppable. I started purchasing fresh coffee from Verve Coffee Roasters in Santa Cruz and by August of 2020; I was now balls-deep in the coffee world. Beans deep, maybe?
Brewing coffee every morning has become a portal of peace and tranquility for me. I know for a fact that every morning I can stand in my kitchen and do the same thing I did yesterday and the day before that: brew coffee. Somedays I enjoy brewing my coffee in silence while others I like to listen to music or a podcast. It typically takes me 5-6 minutes from start to finish, so it can easily be done even with a busy schedule.
Apart from drinking it every morning, I began to set time aside in my daily life to learn about the industry: everything from the roasting process, the aspects of a “farm to table” coffee company, and the environmental aspects of the coffee industry as a whole. I would much rather not begin to discuss these topics in this blog… I will just mention that the coffee industry as a whole is screwed up and that you should support local coffee roasters! :)
I owe thanks to James Hoffman and Dan McGlaughlin for aiding me in my coffee-making ventures and research. Also to Jake and Mark Needham for being my coffee buddies during COVID. Goodonya, gents.
And one last final thank you is due to COFFEE because without it, the 64% of Americans who drink it every morning wouldn’t be able to experience the great coffee poops that come from it. 💩
My favorite comedian Mike Birbiglia has a great joke about coffee*: “If the best part of waking up is Folger’s in my cup, I don’t know if I wanna get up.” I live by this mantra.
*To be fair, the joke in its entirety has more to do with early 2000s hip-hop and Busta Rhymes and nothing to do with coffee, but it seemed appropriate to toss in here.
