Remember the old westerns where two cowboys sat around a campfire at the end of the day drinking their evening coffee? They’d finish by tossing the dregs at the bottom of their cups into the fire, and the fire would hiss for a few seconds and then spit the coffee back out because – dang! – that coffee was strong! Then one cowboy would mumble in his slow Texas drawl, “Well, Slim, that was mighty fine coffee.” And Slim would mumble back, “Well, Dusty, I thought it was a tad bit weak.” Yep – those were the days, and Oh, Boy – have times changed.
Today it’s tricky keeping up with all the coffee establishments in town. At last count we have approximately 867 Starbucks, a new Peets, and a few independents hanging in there. The modern, energy-intensive coffee house has become a kind of societal microcosm. Unfortunately, I have no idea what I just said, a result of partaking in just a little too much coffee this morning. But I think what I meant to say is at coffee cafes you have your customers and you have your baristas, the latter having elevated coffee making to an art form.
I never heard of baristas until the on-rush of Starbucks and its descendants. These days baristas are hip, jive, groovy, with-it or phat, depending on your generation. Baristas are expert in the making of espresso drinks. Some baristas even display the fine art of creatively directing the flow of milk onto the espresso before presentation of a latte or cappuccino to the customer, fashioning simple patterns in the foam such as hearts, leaves and possibly the Mona Lisa.
A coffee joint is never short on entertainment and checking out local independent houses is always interesting. One lively establishment exists in my home town, a conservative blue-collar city in another state. I have no clue where those baristas blew in from but to say they are out of place in that neck of the woods is a vast understatement. The cafe is appropriately named “Wire Works,” and their motto is “We Have Way Too Many Beans.” OK, that’s not their official motto, but trust me when I say I haven’t seen so many body piercings, tattoos and purple hair since the last “Orange Grunge Slimy Rat Spleen” concert, although don’t quote me on that. But they make a decent cup of coffee, and going there for an hour or two produces the kind of after-effects you’d acquire if you spent an afternoon suspended in a lava lamp.
Although the baristas are the ring masters of the coffee house, the true star of the show is the “cuppa Joe” that is now so far removed from the old coffee-grounds-in-a-percolator that our grandparents brewed that they would never recognize the stuff as coffee. Having a modest cup with your morning newspaper has taken a big, wide turn and morphed into the kind of 21st century pop culture statement that has left Slim and Dusty spinning in their graves.
As for coffee beans, they are achieving the status of fine wine. One of the most high-priced varieties runs some $200 per pound, which is, like, way more expensive than gasoline for heaven’s sake, and you know how we gripe about a couple or three cents increase in the cost of fuel. According to the hype, this Panamanian coffee, Esmeralda Especial, has many exotic qualities.
If you want your coffee to “consume your senses with floral aromas,” this is your bean. Yes, I’m talking coffee, not after shave, although a coffee purporting to have “complex fruit and floral notes” that “explode on the palate” sounds risky. Consumption of this product should be in the company of alert, trained medical professionals. As if all that exploding isn’t enough, red licorice, raspberry and blueberry flavors reportedly complement the jasmine and orange blossom fragrances. Hmmmm … I don’t know about you, but I’m just way too under-qualified to appreciate all those substances in a simple cup of coffee. Furthermore, this would lead to licking out the last micro-drops of coffee from the bottom of my cup: not a pretty sight, but at 200 bucks a pound, I’m determined to get my money’s worth.
Now if Esmeralda isn’t trendy enough for you, here’s a suggestion. A mere $600 per pound gets you the rare Indonesian Kopi Luwak, which is derived from – I swear I am not making this up – the droppings of wild civets, a peculiar cat-like mammal that can weigh upwards of 100 pounds. The civet is fond of sweet red coffee cherries, and the animal’s digestive process mysteriously eliminates much of the coffee’s traditional caffeine and bitterness. Kopi Luwak has a “top note of rich, dark chocolate with secondary notes that are musty and earthy,” according to Canadian food scientist Massimo Maracone whose parents must be so proud of this important finding. Major Ick Alert: The beans have to be separated from the rest of the, um, “poop,” before they are roasted and sold.
You’re probably thinking the coffee’s high price tag is due to a tragic shortage of workers willing to separate the civet’s standard poop from the actual coffee beans. However, you would be wrong. The prohibitive cost is because uncooperative civets tend to wander about pooping in all the wrong places so a civet farmer, trying to earn a simple living for heaven’s sake, has to skulk about on neighboring properties lugging some manner of major Pooper Scooper in order to scavenge a few pounds of Kopi Luwak a year. Perhaps if enough politicians get on the Kopi Luwak bandwagon, our government can helpfully intervene by building a 700-mile fence to restrain errant, illegally immigrating civets.
Kopi Luwak beans are precious, friends; misplacing one would be akin to losing the diamond from an engagement ring. So I’m not encouraging you to rush out and purchase a bag of those “earthy” coffee beans for breakfast, but if you do, rest assured that your morning coffee will be good to the very last dropping.
Gale Hammond is a writer and freelance photographer who has lived in Morgan Hill 24 years. Reach her at Ga*********@*ol.com.
