2022
To say I love coffee is an understatement. My friends don't buy me coffee. My family knows better than to ask me if their Keurig coffee pod tastes good when I travel home. I have been known to travel with a hand coffee bean grinder and a french press. I can taste different flavor profiles in good coffee and I've been known to lambast a Starbucks or two for burning or over-roasting their beans. But I digress. First, let me explain when coffee first entered my life.
My First Coffee Crush
I first tried coffee while working during summer and winter break off from school at my dad's plumbing and heating business. I would walk up way earlier than I wanted (5:30 a.m.) and be sent off in work trucks on odd plumbing and heating jobs or help to stock the shelves. Soda and water weren't cutting it and I wasn't able to get to know my fellow workers very well either who congregated near the coffee machine. So I dove in. 20% coffee, 70% creamer, 10% sugar. Cheap bulk coffee with way too much dairy and sugar for a semi-lactose intolerant person like me now, but it did the trick! I was wide awake, sweating, and hearing wildly inappropriate work stories.
Young Love & Experimenting
By the time I went to college at Appalachian State University, I had become a full-blown coffee addict. However, I still used cream and sugar and did enjoy lattes more than regular cups of coffee. This was life. I think I started drinking coffee at 7:00 am and usually had one last cup some nights by 9:00 pm. I liked to study and try to meet the ladies at jazz night at Crossroads Coffee Shop on campus, I took my, now-wife, on a first date to Espresso News coffee shop where we really hit it off. I also loved pairing a coffee or an espresso-infused smoothie with cookies, pastries, and bread at Stick Boy Bread Company.
Taking My Relationship To The Next Level
After college, my wife worked for a coffee roaster and that is when things changed. She convinced me to drink my coffee black. No CREAM. NO SUGAR. I did so and ended up throwing away the coffee I was using at the time. We went to coffee cuppings at Counter Culture Coffee, we tried coffee subscriptions, we planned our vacations and outings around coffee stops. It was Heaven. We traveled abroad to New Zealand and fell in love with the flat white (I think we had 100+ in our 2-week trip). We bought pour-over coffee tools, french presses, scales, and other fun equipment to jazz things up every now and then.
Coffee & I Are Now Monogomous
Nowadays, I have three boys under 7 years old. My wife and I both work, I am always flitting here and there doing Local Guide work, and coffee and I are still as hot and heavy as ever. I like to keep the spark alive, you have to be 25 years into a relationship. I may see a sexy tea being brewed up nearby, but why would I bother? I've got a good thing brewing.
Most days I drink my coffee black, maybe 4-5 cups. But sometimes I feel frisky and order a flat white, an iced coffee, an americano, or maybe even mix in some coffee to my chocolate and peanut butter banana smoothie. It is nice knowing what type of coffee I like and don't like. My favorite is African coffee, more specifically, Ethiopian, and even more specifically, from the Yirgacheffe region of Ethiopia. I know I have many years of coffee marriage left in me. When young people ask me how I am able to keep my relationship with coffee going after all these years, I tell them these things:
- Get to know your coffee. Take it on some dates
- Where are they sourced from, what region?
- Learn About Yourself First
- What do YOU like? What roast makes you happy?
- Communication Is Key
- Ask your coffee if it really likes sharing its cup with cream, or soy milk, or foamy whip?
- Patience
- It can take a while to figure out what you like. A pour-over coffee takes too damn long some days, but it is worth it.
Join in with me for the October #monthlytopic on coffee! See @HiroyukiTakisawa post.
Do you have a coffee you love the most? When did you start your love affair with coffee?
I enjoyed your story @JordanSB and was just telling @LuigiZ that we've been trying all sorts of coffee from different parts of the world and here's a pic of "some" of our latest South American coffee beans that we're trialing. Hopefully there's truthfulness in the package labelling!
You definitely need to try some Ethiopian or Yirgacheffe coffee, @HeyitsNicho. The flavors are incomparable to any other region I've tried!
Nice, @AdamGT, and @LuigiZ! I have done different coffee subscriptions for a few years. Coffees from the U.S., Jamaica, Central and South America, Africa, and Asia.
My favorites, in order, are:
- Africa
- Ethiopia
- Rwanda
- Uganda
- Kenya
- Asia
- Papua New Guinea
- Java
- Sumatra
- Central America
- South America
- Everything Else
