“Earth’s crammed with heaven, And every common bush afire with God; But only he who sees, takes off his shoes— The rest sit round it and pluck blackberries,” — Elizabeth Barrett Browning
It’s 8am on a Saturday. I’m walking into Home Depot to buy wood for some raised garden beds, and I forgot to make coffee. There wasn’t time to measure and grind my Yirgacheffe beans, heat water to 204℉, pre-rinse the Chemex filter, and pour the water at just the right rate to get the best brew possible.
I know the fastest way to the wood is through the contractor entrance—basic knowledge to all weekend DIYers. I spot a stainless steel cylinder with a black spout that promises something dark and hopefully caffeinated.
And I need something.
The morning drag is real, and I have a full Saturday of splinters and cursing house projects ahead of me. So I grab a Styrofoam cup, pour myself some molten brew, and start walking toward the lumber section.
The smell of fresh cut wood engulfs me as I round the corner of the 30 ft shelves. It’s the smell of possibility—endless ideas for things you can build with your own hands. I blow on the coffee. Take a sip.
It’s all wrong.
The cup is melting, the coffee is somehow bitter and watered down, and I catch notes of wet concrete on a hot day. And it’s so good.
I stand in the lumber aisle, sipping sludge, completely content.
I had my first cup of coffee when I was around four years old.
We lived in Colombia, on the third floor of a three-story building above two older women who spent their days at a row of sewing machines, hemming and mending. My brother and I would crawl down two flights of stairs, knock on their door, and spend the afternoon on their floor playing with tape measures—whips in the hands of fearless adventurers.
My mom came down more than once to find us already at their dinner table, eating an early meal we’d invited ourselves to.
One evening our whole family went over for dinner. Afterwards, the women offered my parents coffee, as any good Colombian host would. I wandered into the kitchen, where one of them handed me a small demitasse cup with equal parts coffee and sugar.
34 years later, I remember that first sip.
Colombian coffee is famous most everywhere in the world. To us, it was the background of our days. Coffee carts on street corners pulled strangers into early morning conversations. In high school, cafés provided my friends and I a place to kill time after school. And we always offered guests a cup of coffee after dinner, our way of asking people to stay awhile.
College gave me a chance to find myself my coffee.
And I owe that all to Cafe Brazil.
My friends and I loved that diner with its green vinyl-top chairs, fluorescent lighting, and the nine or ten air-pots full of coffee you could access any time of night for a couple of bucks. It didn’t matter that the whole place kind of felt like your grandma from Tennessee dressed up as a Brazilian dancer for Halloween—she meant well.
We would show up early—around 9pm—the night before an exam, weave our way through the tables to find a suitable spot, spread out our books, and spend the next several hours making laps between our studies and the coffee station. By midnight, the place was full of students claiming just one more hour and groups of women in sequins and cowboy boots looking for somewhere to work off a buzz.
The coffee lineup gave us something to talk about between reviews of morphemes and sentence mapping. There were always a few classics: Texas Pecan, French Vanilla, Breakfast Blend. Then there were the wildcards, always on rotation: Sugar Plum, Banana Nut Bread, Eggnog. I worked through most of them over the course of a semester.
In the end, I landed on dark roast. I liked it, and I liked that it sounded more hardcore. Everyone else was pouring French Vanilla. I was drinking the dark stuff.
After college I moved to Seattle, a city long since drowned by the 3rd wave of coffee.
I was thrown into deep waters: local roasters, coffee tastings, barista competitions. I started paying five or six dollars for cups made by young men and women who treated my order like an interruption—it seemed enjoying coffee and enjoying people was mutually exclusive.
I was taught the way of the v60, the syphon, and the aeropress. I vowed never to set foot in a Starbucks again (unless it was the unbranded, secret Starbucks that had great wifi).
When I moved back to Dallas, I brought all of it with me. I would discuss origin locations, experimental methods, and roast profiles. I became a barista at one of the first shops in the city to offer Chemex pour overs and Nitro cold brew. I wasn’t rude about it.
I accepted that I’d have to order tea when friends chose lesser cafes and that I’d have to wait until payday to afford the good stuff. That was just part of it.
At least my mother-in-law (God bless her) started buying me a bag of specialty beans before every holiday so I wouldn’t have to suffer through Folgers.
These days, I still grind my own beans and make a Chemex in the morning—a small attempt to value craft amidst the chaos of getting two kids up, fed, and out the door.
But that Home Depot moment found a foothold in my psyche, and I’ve loosened my grip on how I define good coffee.
I stop at Starbucks on road trips. I won’t spend more than $15 on a bag of beans unless it’s Christmas. I scoff at scoffing baristas. And I brew coffee in a regular coffee pot at my in-laws (even though they have to reteach me how many scoops every time I go).
So now the cup I have is usually the right one.
Except Keurig. To hell with Keurig.