This is an article that I wrote to talk about something I love with anybody who wants to read it.
Coffee Can Taste Great, No Really it Can!
I drink coffee every day, and I’ve been doing so for fifteen years. I’ll probably drink it for the rest of my life.
As one of my two drinks of passion, craft beer being the other, I’m drawn to its taste more than anything.
Of course, I’m not talking about Starbucks, Folgers, Chock full o’ Nuts, Nescafe, etc..
I try my best to find a light-roasted coffee, usually a variety that showcases sweet fruit flavors, bright acidity, and heavy mouthfeel.
This type of cup usually comes from raw coffee processing methods that promote fermentation, “anaerobic natural” for example, and typically from an Arabica variety. Ethiopian is my favorite, but I’ve had many great cups from Colombia, Kenya, Peru, India, Guatemala, Nicaragua, you name it.
There is a huge, ever-growing variety. There are so many origins, blends, and processing methods that every batch of beans is unique.
One of the best cups I’ve ever had was at Slow by Slow Coffee in Boise, Idaho. The beans were hilariously named “Watermelon Drops” by DAK Coffee Roasters in Amsterdam. They were an Arabica variety from the Huila region of Colombia that were anaerobically fermented. The flavor absolutely blew me away! The best single word to describe it is “juicy.”
Today on How It’s Made with Susie and Tim
My wife and I are always trying new brewing methods at home. We started out in high school with a counter-top drip machine, then moved on to an Aeropress, then picked up a V60 pour-over, were gifted a Chemex, stumbled upon a Bialetti Moka pot, replaced the gasket in our Aeropress, bought another Aeropress, broke our Chemex, and now we are finally settling into our Gaggia Classic Pro espresso machine. We use a Bonavita 1.5L gooseneck kettle and my favorite thrift-store find to date: a Baratza Virtuoso burr grinder. The V60 is our favorite for camping!
To reduce our coffee costs and continue to enjoy other parts of the arts of the procedure, we have acquired over the years through gifting and thrifting multiple Whirley Pop stove-top popcorn makers to roast green coffee beans at home. Being such a mechanical process and us being such amateur roasters, we usually end up with different levels of roast for the same beans, so we get to try even more variations!
Obviously, that’s a lot of gear, but let’s talk about…
The Routine
Making coffee in the morning is the easiest way to wake up your brain. It’s a simple procedure that requires basic hand-eye coordination. It stimulates our sense of hearing when we first engage the grinder, which immediately wakes up our sense of smell. The tiny whisk that distributes the coffee evenly in the heavy weighted portafilter wakes up the fine pitch muscles in our hands. Then, if it all goes according to plan, the extraction fills one of our pottery mugs with my favorite drink in the world.
But more important than all of that - drinking that cup with a loved one from start to finish every morning is an experience I wish everyone had the privilege to enjoy. There are no bad cups had in this manner.
That being said, there are drawbacks to coffee consumption.
The Downsides
Coffee is ultimately a consumable and it costs a not-insignificant amount of money.
As a commodity, there are also climate implications and other ethical consequences associated. Deforestation, pesticides and fertilizers, wastewater handling, plastic use like single-use coffee cups (and non-recyclable paper replacements), single use shipping materials, etc., and the energy required in the transportation, roasting, and brewing (appx. 60% of total energy used in the process) to name a few.
Coffee is also only able to be grown in specific regions of the world that have appropriate climate, soil, and altitude (rather, the daytime warmth and cold nights associated). This means that each local farmer who grows it has market needs that are unique.
As with all things, it’s best to directly support individual or cooperative farms instead of secondary trade exchanges that give a higher percentage of coffee profits to importers and exporters. Since coffee is typically packaged at the farm-level in 50-70kg bags, it does make sense for the average consumer to buy from a local roaster who can buy in bulk and repackage it for you.
Another downside that comes up for me often is that sometimes my relationship with coffee feels like it is an addiction.
I really do drink it every day, and when I don’t, I can end up with caffeine withdrawal headaches. Like all things in life, I’m working on maintaining a healthy relationship with it by moderation.
The good news is that regularly drinking coffee in moderation is probably not a short-term or long-term health hazard.
All of the equipment I described earlier is also both an upside and a downside. Ideally, I would have one method that works, and stick with it forever, but sometimes I want to try that new brewing method!
After this many years, though, I do feel like my consumption of new brewing methods has greatly gone down. Plus, I have been able to pass along some of our brewing equipment to others to use secondhand!
Like all consumables (and everything, really), Coffee has an impact on climate change. The amount of greenhouse gas emissions consumed by boiling water to brew a cup can vary dramatically depending on how your region generates power, but the general idea of reducing consumption applies here.
Also, there is a reciprocal impact of climate change on growing coffee that may have long term implications for the sustainability of the crop.
Low Hanging Fruit
I’m going to make a focused attempt to minimize the effect my consumption of coffee has on the world by doing the following:
- In terms of energy consumption, the first step was to start monitoring the power consumption of our counter-top espresso machine. I use HomeAssistant for this (somewhere between 0.2 and 0.3 kWh per day for 2-4 cups).
- Drinking less of it in general - one cup a day is a good target when I have free access to it (so hard to say no!)
- Hard stance on not consuming single-use plastic coffee pods and not using plastic lids
- No reheating coffee - no sense wasting energy here, the coffee is already brewed and is still tasty when cold!
- No dairy milk in my coffee - a constant battle to reduce my dairy consumption continues with coffee.
- Buy from farmers as directly as possible! Some importers, like Sweet Maria’s, include a significant amount of traceability for the coffee they import.
- Try to buy coffee shipped by sea rather than plane
- Compost our waste coffee grounds - We vermicompost them, but you can also add them to your compost pile or straight to your garden.
- As always, vocally advocate for these changes to friends and family to amplify the sustainable practices.
If you like coffee, I hope your cup is fantastic today. If not, I hope you find a cup you like someday.
Cheers!