Why Coffee?
Reading Time ~2 Minutes: This was my first piece as a part of the 7th Write of Passage Cohort.
For 23 years, I saw coffee as nothing more than a bitter, black drink that belongs in frappuccinos. I never paid much attention to it - I was studying engineering, who cares how coffee is made? I’ll drink it to wake up, maybe put it on ice cream, and that’s about it. But then I came across the Chemex brewing tool. More importantly, it came with an 8-step pocket guide on brewing coffee. That’s when everything changed.
Coffee ended up playing a momentous part in my life. Coffee taught me a lesson that’s unlocked so many more: nothing is boring. If we look deep enough, everything is more complex, fascinating, and fulfilling than we think.
Fast Forward 4 years, and coffee’s intricacies take up a ton of my mind share. But I’m not a barista. I’m not a coffee shop owner. And I’m not one of the talented individuals who cultivate coffee beans. Yet, I’ve spent endless hours learning about coffee. Researching how it’s grown. Experimenting with how it’s brewed. Deepening how I understood i’s complexity. Coffee brought out my inner chemist unlike even chemistry did! It fosters an innate, untenable sense of curiosity within me, one that’s rarely matched.
At the surface, this makes little sense. But let’s talk about my coffee journey.
I used to think coffee beans go into a Mr Coffee Machine, it spits out coffee, and that’s the story. But that tiny, pocket-size Chemex guide opened my eyes to coffee’s complexities. Miniscule changes like the water: coffee weight ratio, bean grind size, water temperature, pouring technique, and blooming periods make outsized impacts on your coffee’s quality! This was crazy to me. How could such a pervasive drink have so many layers of complexity? It’s what dug the rabbit holes I’ve been falling into these past few years.
This specialty coffee journey continually unveils how nuanced the world of coffee is. The default coffee we order is typically a blend of origins - it’s designed to have a balanced taste so everyone can drink it. By mixing different coffee origins, their distinct flavors meld into each other, effectively mellowing out any distinct standouts. But there’s a whole world of “Single Origin” coffees where the beans are sourced entirely from a single farm. This eliminates that neutralizing effect of blending origins. Instead, unique, vibrant flavors shine through. Sure, sometimes they’re not great. But overall, the quality and vibrancy are unparalleled. But coffee origins are just the tip of the complexity iceberg. It gets even more complex if you dig deeper - there are over 1000s of coffee bean varieties, each with their own distinct flavor, characteristics, and caffeine levels, to name a few.
It’s easy to see coffee as just a morning jolt, but to me, coffee is a daily reminder of crucial life lessons. First, nothing is boring. If you deepen your observations, you’ll be amazed by what’s happening behind the scenes. Every tiny detail of our world is shaped by centuries of history, how can anything be simple and boring? The sheer quality difference between single origins and blends yields another important life lesson: if you’re a product for everyone (blend), you’re probably mediocre. Find your “origin”, double down on it, and let your vibrancy shine through. The fruity brightness of Ethiopian coffees is lost in the ocean of origins they’re blended into. Don’t get lost in the ocean. Don’t be the product for everyone. Be the single-origin coffee, and your people will find you.
