A Long Way to a Good Cup
If you grew up in India in the 1990s, I am fairly certain you will identify with much of what follows.
Coffee has been a part of my life since I was a kid, in some form or another. Initially, I saw coffee, I presume like many of us, as a fairly straightforward alternative to tea. It came as a fine, delicious smelling muddy-brown powder in a good looking and stout glass bottle of Nescafe Instant or Bru. A cup of this was a simple affair - hot milk, sugar, coffee. Stir and done. I remember liking it. My mother would make hot cups for everyone post-dinner, on some cold winter nights. Fond memories.
Over the following years, my perception of coffee changed a bit. I was just into college, and Cafe Coffee Day had started popping up everywhere. Coffee was now cool - you needed to be seen at a "CCD", and you had to know how to say "cappuccino". And I was completely (internally, I couldn't let this show outside!) puzzled by the coffee at these "joints". It seemed to be either too milky, too foamy, too bitter, or (when, in an effort to appear effortless, I ordered an espresso) too little and too bitter. Around the same time, our engineering tuition tutor introduced me to the intriguing-sounding "red-eye" - a strong double-espresso shot from India Coffee House. I don't think I have had a coffee more bitter, or one that felt so masochistic to drink. Just my opinion, of course.
Bottom line being, what I thought real coffee was, was a mystery. So I left it at the old and familiar, and didn't give it too much thought. Just one more item in the list of things I didn't understand, and didn't feel a compelling need to.
For most of the following years, coffee and I were just passing acquaintances, like that one person you see regularly at work or in the neighborhood, but don't really connect with. And yet, there is some comfort in seeing that face from time to time-just because it reminds you of simpler times. A case in point would be the South Indian filter coffee, which felt right only after a meal of dosas.
Then things around it started to change for me again.
It was gradual. I think Sleepy Owl was the trigger to my first coffee-related search. And then a bevy of brands started popping up on my feed. Dope Coffee. Davidoff Instant coffee. Even good old Nescafé but now in an expensive bottle labelled Gold. And then, like a signal from heaven, I hit upon something more. On a trip to Japan, on the in-room bar of a hotel, I saw a couple of classy-looking and tastily named coffee pods in what looked like a jewelry box, next to a shiny black Nespresso machine. The very process of inserting a pod into the Nespresso, pressing a button, the slow warming up, the flurry of sounds, and then that rush of delicious-smelling coffee in the cup was fascinating.
Sleek equipment, crema-topped coffee. I thought I had finally found 'real' coffee, and I took an excited sip.
It tasted as bitter as bitter coffee can be.
And again, I didn't get it. What was it about coffee that the world raved about, but I could not see? I had to clear up the proverbial fog of ignorance around the 'world's favorite beverage'.
And thus after years of indifference, I set out to figure coffee out.
As with most hobbies, the initial rush of discovery was fun and expensive. I got a Nespresso. I dug up a French press we had received as a gift a while back. Then I bought a Moka pot. A grinder. I bought specialty coffee from exotic-sounding brands in beautiful packaging. I started weighing my beans and started obsessing over grind size. I started looking at roast dates. At tasting notes and roasting methods. It was a whole new world!
I was (and am) pretty hooked. The process of making coffee at home - from weighing out beans to pouring the brew into a cup is my favorite morning routine. I stop short of calling it a ritual, though I can sense why those who call it that (meaningfully) do so.
The coffee I drink today honestly feels like an acquired taste - it is nowhere like the sweet and sugary affair from childhood, and I don't find that 'home-like' feeling in it. But what I have found is a lot of enjoyment - a well turned out shot from the Moka pot, as an americano, cortado or (rarely) straight up espresso, feels like a reward. There is a wealth of flavours that come through in the absence of sugar, the aroma is amazing and the kick-start to the brain is undeniable and awesome.
The skill lies in getting the variables right - and that's a journey that keeps getting better!
I won't say the cliched thing - 'come join me on the journey'. Your journey might be different. But in case you are into coffee, you might find something of interest here.