Jun 07 2008
coffee a brief personal history
Coffee: a brief personal history
BY: Matthew Erickson
Sniff, sniff. MMMM,mmmmm. To me, nothing smells better than some freshly ground coffee. The sharp characteristic smell ignites something within me, snapping me awake, enabling me to face the daily grind (pun intended). Good gravy, do I love coffee. It is, in my estimation, the ideal drink. Manna from heaven, sent down to us mere mortals so that we might sip and become enlightened and godlike in our mental abilities.
I started drinking coffee in my early teens, quickly becoming addicted to the caffeine, growing increasingly dependent upon it throughout high school. Unschooled in the ways of true coffee appreciation, I took my daily dark elixir with lots of cream and sugar, or, “Swedish”, as they called it in the Upper Midwest. It was not until my later teens did I develop a taste for the black and bitter type. Now, I cannot stand coffee that is sweetened in any way. A little cream is fine, but sugar is an absolute no.
Back then (the nineties) I was not very picky about my coffee. As long as it was hot, black and brewed within the last 48 hours, I would drink it. Starbucks had yet to explode into the global phenomenon that it is now and us poor Midwesterners saw McDonalds blend as pretty much the high water mark in coffee quality. (To this day, I refuse to knock McD’s coffee. It is a good cup for its price.) Growing up in the prepackaged for your convenience society had led me to accept the rather bland taste of the grocery store blends as the norm. The taste came second to the caffeine buzz, anyhow.
It was not until I got out of college, did my coffee palate gain more sophistication. Whether or not this had to do with those little green mermaids popping up all over the place, I will not say. Good old Folgers did nothing for me anymore. Sure, it woke me up, but it was lacking in taste. It was around this time that I discovered the grinder and the French Press. New taste sensations hit me like a runaway truck the first time I tried a cup of coffee from the French Press. Its flavor had so much character and nuance compared to the drip. I vowed to never go back.
During my quest for bulk whole beans, I started to become interested in the origins of various coffees and the differing tastes each region of the coffee growing world had to offer. While I did like certain coffee blends, I found most too bland and uniform. By drinking coffees from a specific region, I felt connected to that part of the world.
So now, I had thought I had become a true coffee connoisseur. I scoffed at the everyday Joe who got his fix from some machine in the hallway. I tried to convert everyone I knew to the French Press Ideal, giving them away as presents at every opportunity. I thought I was at the highest level of true coffee snobbery.
Until I discovered home coffee roasting….
