As I sip freshly brewed coffee from my mug while preparing to express to the reader how much coffee means personally, I think: What is it about coffee that gets me going?
I could recall my experience just moments ago. My desk sits just outside my kitchen beyond a doorless frame covered by sliding drapes. This is where my Hario V60 lives. The same V60 that I utilized to make the coffee I'm currently enjoying. It's a therapeutic ritual for me. "Ritual" makes me feel better about how many times I perform the task throughout a single day. It's a habit, of course. Some might see it as an uncontrollable, result-driven craving, especially if they were to look left of my V60 to see the five bags of coffee--each from different roasters--that I currently have at the ready. And if they knew this cup of coffee to be my second within the hour they might truly feel "addiction" to be the relevant term.
The setup is a downgrade from what it used to be considering I sold a lot of my equipment when I moved across the country to a city many might regard to be the stomping ground of coffee lovers and third-wave coffee specialists--Seattle, WA. And that is one of the reasons I chose this city over others. Much like a bed of wet, course grounds--there's coffee along every crack and crevice of Seattle. I happen to work as a coffee professional along one of these cracks or crevices. I also happened to put on hold a career of creating content, writing social media posts for the mayor of my previous city, and creating documentaries that won national awards to pursue what I felt would make me happier. I went from working in coffee shops, writing from beyond the bar, to working behind the counter servicing Capitol Hill, and creating compelling content for Overcast Coffee Company's social channels.
Leave it to an enthusiast to think he could come into a professional role in coffee assuming he knew it all, yet there was so much still to learn. And I did learn quite a bit more. The learning doesn't stop, dear reader. I can't imagine a better way to indulge my coffee infatuation (addiction) further than writing about coffee considering I live and breathe it already.
But back to the setup I'm speaking of, the one that I left behind. I owned several brewers and machines to fuel my everyday needs—including the Hario V60, french press, Aeropress, April Coffee Brewer, Oragami Dripper, Stagg (XF) Pour-over Set, a Chemex, and finally a cheap espresso machine that hardly worked which came from amazon. That didn't stop me from making a few americanos with it, no matter how difficult it was to find the right portafilter basket and tamper. This list up until now doesn't include the Breville Smart Grinder Pro I had. Nor does it speak of the Timemore hand grinder or smart scale, or my Stagg EKG Kettle (the second one I've purchased).
Years of admiring coffee, working in coffee, and striving to maintain my status as a glorified home barista have led me to this moment: writing about coffee. Sorry to say I must go. My third cup of coffee is waiting for me.