Why Make Good Coffee
People who do not drink coffee should not be in charge of making coffee.
This was a lesson I learned when I first started to drink coffee as a teenager and realized the person making our church’s coffee didn’t have a clue what he was doing. This lack of truly comprehending what coffee was not only caused the individual to “guestimate” the portions of bucket grounds he was using in each pot (it was always inordinately too much), but he simultaneously thought he could save the church money by double brewing. The result was a coffee that not only tasted burnt but was either thick and sludgy or watery and weak.
Many churches and organizations operate this way. Likewise, many people operate this way. They live a life drinking bad coffee because they have never really known that there is anything beyond what they have tasted. Though I begrudgingly admit that some people just don’t and will never like coffee, I have frequently found that what many people object to is a certain version of coffee--typically the kind that is burnt, stale, and sludgy. Either that, or people become conditioned to think burnt, stale, and sludgy is the way coffee is meant to be, leaving them without a genuine experience of the intricacies, flavor profiles, and complexities of a distinct cup.
Imagine if you are an “apple person” (not the computer brand--the fruit!). You love apples. You eat one every day, not just in hopes that it will keep the doctor away, but because you really just like apples. But imagine I come to you and offer you a Fuji apple. And then a Pink Lady apple. And then I pull out a Honeycrisp or a Granny Smith. You look at me, perplexed. You have no idea what I am talking about. “I’ve never heard of any of those,” you respond. You never knew until now that apples could be green or small and come in varieties, that they could taste different (even radically so) from one another. The only apples you had ever been exposed to were red, polished, medium sized apples just placed into a bag of other similar looking apples with a label on the outside which simply read “Apples.”
For many people, “Coffee is coffee,” in the same way that “Apples are apples” in my story. That’s it. There is no distinction between regions, varieties, and roast profiles. Colombian and Nicaraguan are as irrelevant as Washed and Natural. Furthermore, for many people who believe “Coffee is coffee” the idea that coffee might be brewed in various ways feels to enhance these tasting notes and varietal differences is laborious and unnecessary. Why? Because coffee is just coffee. They find it in a bucket on a grocery store shelf, measure out the scoop, and throw it into a cheap plastic auto-drip maker.
If you were the apple person in my story, I would likely encourage you to try some different apples from around the world. I would tell you that you’ve been missing out. Those bland, mass produced, consumer-ready, homogenized apples may be what you are used to. They may even be your conditioned preference, and you will immediately recoil at the sour apple sinking into your teeth. And, yet, by holding out on the experience you ultimately do yourself a disservice by not at least trying to expand your horizons.
But I am not Johnny Appleseed, and my job is not to convince you to try new apple varieties. Besides, you can extrapolate my analogy to just about any consumable and any experience in life. At the end of the day, one of the reasons to pursue making a good cup is simply due to experiencing the breadth of what life allows us to partake in. In this sense, making good coffee is about making new experiences and truly expanding the palette of the things we enjoy in this one life to live.
Other Reasons to Make Good Coffee
There are, however, other reasons to make good coffee.
First, making good coffee respects the journey--the time, labor, and stories--that go into the drink. In a world in which we give little thought and reflection to how our food comes to us or the human journey things take before arriving at our doorstep, pursuing a good cup of coffee helps us genuinely value and respect the fact that despite the illusion of things just appearing on our grocery shelves or our front doors. Any parent knows this feeling when their kids finally learn how much effort goes into making a good meal. One of the best ways to enhance gratitude in the home is through participation. When a kid helps make a good quality dinner, they may very well learn that a home cooked meal does not just magically plop in front of them (I may say this from some experience on both sides of that issue).
Second, making good coffee opens up the world for us for different kinds of coffees or different kinds of brewing methods. For example, in pursuing different coffees I have found some that I really enjoy above others. I have also learned to appreciate different brewing methods over others or for different occasions or different beans or roast profiles. For example, there are fewer things better in the world than a light roasted, washed Ethiopian Yirgacheffe that has been French Pressed. It is simply exquisite. I do not prefer this bean in my Moka Pot (though, to be honest, sometimes I do). Ultimately though, when you pursue good coffee
Finally, making good coffee creates a sensory experience that can enhance other components of your life. I do not want to minimize this. Just as coffee was birthed in monastic religious rituals to enhance the spiritual life, so a good cup of coffee can enhance the spiritual, relational, and emotional life now. How many people start their day with a cup of coffee, not simply as a caffeine boost to start their day, but as a core component to how they are going to live their day. Maybe coffee goes hand in hand with a Holy Scripture, a quiet moment with the spouse before the kids wake up, or just something to take in hand as you watch the sunrise come up? When we choose good coffee and we make good coffee, this opportunity for coffee to blossom our psychological, spiritual, and relational lives is almost unparalleled. Conversely, these moments are defeated when we use coffee as merely a means of “jolting us awake” or a part of a consumeristic society.
P.S. If you follow Drinklings, you know that all of our stickers and magnets come from StickerMule. We're excited to promote their GIVE program, which is a platform for brands (like Drinklings) through easy to set up t-shirt giveaways. We aim to try this out soon ourselves, but as StickerMule has been a fantastic partner in our journey, creating the best quality stickers we have come across, we wanted to promote this new engagement. You can read more about it here!
