When I think about coffee, I tend to think about the people who drink it, not about the beans, or the farm, or the beans or the brewing.
About a week ago, I came to work and found a Ziploc bag of coffee beans in the office kitchen. A coworker nudged me, and said, “One of our clients started roasting coffee at home. He gave us a bag. You should try it.”
I took the transparent bag in hand and looked at it. Together with the blackened coffee beans was a single scrap of paper, which read, “Ethiopia/Guatemala blend”. I opened the bag and an aroma wafted out. I pictured a forest after a fire. I thought of charred branches, disintegrating beneath a boot as a light rain began to fall.
It was a special kind of dark.
“Yeah,” I said, “maybe I’ll take some home and brew a cup.”
But I knew that I wouldn’t.
I’d met that client before, actually. He was a nice guy, friendly, and it was easy to picture him brewing in the morning; sitting down at the kitchen table before the rest of the family woke, and sipping of his secret brew. I’m sure he’d enjoy that kind of thing. Clearly, he enjoyed it enough to want to share it.
