Sitting on my back porch during the long Memorial Day weekend, I took a SIP of my coffee - a strong mixture of dark and light, beans that I myself - soil and wondered...
When has it become such a coffee snob?
When to go purchase in bulk Folgers or Maxwell House to insist on the quality to grind me and BREW to perfection beans? When first using the term micro-rôti?
Thinking back, my father first taught me the best way to drink coffee. Black and strong, he told me when I was 6.
"Don't get hooked on cream and sugar," he said, "because then you will never disappointed if you stop a coffee and they do not have a cream or sugar." Learn to drink black. »
So I did it, and I never regretted.
Of course, Dad spoke on the edge of the road stops at a filling station - gotta go, he said, and then he would come back with a cup of black coffee small plastic foam. It was nice, I thought, and I began to do the same, develop a taste for coffee of the gas-solid station.
Me fact vibrate to think now.
After I have grown my taste in adulthood, my wife and I went an offer for a free coffee pot if register us with the Gevalia coffee - a correspondence deal where every six weeks a shipment arrives at our door.
We need a new pot, in any event, so we signed. And for the next few years, our taste buds open to wonders of some really good java. Expensive, of course. But it became very difficult to settle for nothing less.
From this point, things began to effect snowball quickly enough.
My stepson has shown me the wonders of a coffee bean mill, teaching me how best a coffee pot can be when the beans are ground just before brewing. So, I had my own mill and began to command a whole-bean coffee, a practice I continue today.
Then, that little Starbucks Seattle-based company began to build new stores everywhere, turn on new words such as "venti" and "large". Here, I had my first latte, my first mocha. I have tried many drinks different, but always missed the coffee strong and black.
Then place on my trip of snobbery was discovered the coffee brewed by Patachou Cafe. Beans full flavor, origin, brewed to perfection. Ideal for use with cinnamon toast.
And that led me to something else new: Jamaica blue coffee, considered by many to be among the best beans you can get in the world. And $30 per bag, they would better good.
Pretty good stuff, or so I thought. (Yeah, it gets... better or worse?)
As downtown Carmel has increased in recent years, we have been pleased to welcome a few new options for coffee. Places like Soho Cafe & Gallery, eggshell Bistro and Holy Cow Cupcakes.
It places that take their coffee seriously - ordering beans micro-grillage successfully throughout the country. And they took my taste buds to new levels.
I have learned the art of one for control. I learned about siphon pots that use an open flame and a vacuum system suction of coffee to create what is still the best cup of coffee I've ever had.
I have met other coffee experts and of coffee snobs who taught me that a great cup of coffee is one that has an index of a fruit-flavoured (say, a note of Blueberry nice) that comes from some beans.
I also learned that the flavour of this cup of coffee can often change by cooling.
Here, today, I am excited about two new things coming to the Carmel.
All of first, a new Hubbard & Cravens coffee shop and wine (with a full kitchen) bar is about to open in the Centre of the town of Carmel. This is the good news for customers of Palladium and the Performing Arts Center, which will have another place close to wet their whistles before or after a show.
And this is great news for snobs like me, to be a place to engage in a premium snobbery.
Last week, I had a taste in her new place in a gathering of the Association of the Indy coffee. As we sampled espresso and iced coffee, I listened to Rick Hubbard says its new system of brewing the perfect bean.
I quickly realized that I have only scraped the surface.
Second, there are plans to hold a "Barista" Jam in July at Soho coffee. This seems to be the first time for an event designed to help young or inexperienced baristas coffee-shop to get better at what they do.
There will be "teaching stations" in place to teach how to do for a control, a French press of quality and a pot of siphon. There will be sampling and Q & A sessions. There may even be a "latte art launching down" for those who like to use their well skills to create images at the top of their lattes.
It will be open to the public, and I cannot but think of anyone who has will walk away learn something new on the art of a good cup of coffee.
And soon, there will be coffee snobs run, the search for this great cup of java.
Isn't time for you to join the party?
Follow on Twitter at @ DanMcFeely.
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