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Coffee is coffee. I know that much.
There is a tendency to fetishise coffee these days, be it its provenance (“single origin” might be the most overused term in this industry) or its production (you know what I mean if you’ve had a barista asked you if you like your filter coffee brewed with a V60, Aeropress, siphon, flannel or the sheer force of his muscular palms pressing together).
I get it. It can be a bit too over.
But I’d be lying if I said I weren’t hopelessly addicted to the stuff. Nary a day goes by without a cup or two. It doesn’t matter if it’s an espresso or a kopi O kaw, a flat white or a Nescafé tarik. Whatever the coffee snobs tell you, coffee is coffee. It’s liquid caffeine. It’s what wakes most of us up on most days of the week.
Coffee is about rituals, for some of us. Every morning I will go through the motions of getting my brewing paraphernalia out: the Clever Dripper with its turquoise cover and coaster, a Hario pot I hunted down in Tokyo just for its olive wood handle and lid, my pair of Bodum double-walled glass tumblers, an Acaia Pearl Model S coffee scale I bought with winnings from a casino in Macao, a Comandante hand grinder from Germany, filter paper from Daiso (because, clearly, I am now broke after splurging on all the equipment like a coffee nerd).
Home baristas are hobbyists, are otakus. We crave something to occupy our time. Instead of cosplay or miniature figurine painting, we make coffee and make a huge fuss about it. A performance no one witness but us and whoever’s at home. (Taste tester, coffee critic, café hopping companion, we all need one of them.)
Coffee is about travelling and finding a new reason to do so. Visiting obscure coffee shops that locals don’t even know of, chatting up baristas and coffee roasters in a smattering of different tongues, buying bags of coffee beans back home as gifts to our favourite baristas and to grind, smell, brew and taste, of course.
Is coffee ever about the actual drinking of the beverage? Yes, oh yes. There’s never a doubt about it. Coffee is one rare joy that is both the journey and the destination. And when our cup has been emptied, we can dream about those fruity, floral notes like the ghostly memories that appear when we least expect it and we can eagerly await our next cup, our next brewing, our next – but never last – coffee.
