I have drunk coffee since my early teens. I was brought up in a family of tea drinkers, and as a child I enjoyed collecting the
Brooke Bond tea cards. Those tea cards are still
collectable - but as they were so popular, there are many of them and the values are low. Anyway, somehow I started drinking coffee in my early teens - coffee had a more rounded flavour, with some body. Added to which, the image of coffee was somewhat more interesting than tea. Battle of Britain Spitfire pilots drank coffee. Americans drank coffee, and - hard to believe now - America was very cool in the Sixties and early Seventies. Cowboys drank coffee. Mods drank coffee in coffee bars in Soho. Coffee had a fascinating image, while tea was drunk by old ladies in curlers and pee-stained knickers.
While instant coffee was the main drink in the UK back in the early Seventies, I did experiment with the ground coffee that was then available in the supermarkets. The method of making coffee then, was to simply mix coffee grinds and boiling water in an enamel jug - sometimes adding the hot water to the coffee, or sometimes by boiling up the water in the jug with the coffee already in. The jug would sit on the stove. These jugs always looked cool.
Over time I picked up little bits of information, and tried various other ways of making coffee - filters and drips. I stopped taking sugar in my coffee in my twenties. And, just as I reached 40, when I was a teacher and we had a coffee filter in the staff room, I stopped taking milk as someone said that as a coffee lover I should drink it black. At this point I had also given up completely on drinking instant coffee. But I was still fairly ignorant about coffee - where exactly it came from, and what the different roasts were. So I bought a book The Complete Guide to Coffee.
What I got from that book was that coffee was a lot more complex than I first realised. After trying out a few more methods of coffee making, I settled on the cafetière or
French press, and loved its ease of use, flexibility, and ability to make a decent cup of coffee quickly and easily. I experimented with
Wittards flavoured coffees, and found I didn't like that. And I didn't like cappuccino or espresso. I liked ground coffee which had character, and where the character wasn't masked by sugar, milk, flavouring, over-roasting, boiling the water, or dripping through paper. I suppose I was becoming a coffee geek. I discovered an independent coffee roaster in an alley in Strood, Medway, and would try different types of coffee and different roasts, but without really recording my impressions.
Then, about two years ago, I started blogging. I blogged about music at first. Not often - but enough for me to see that blogging was fun. And then a year ago I started blogging about tea and coffee. Using this blog as a record of my coffee and tea drinking, and my explorations into different types of tea and coffee. And about coffee and tea in general. Their history and culture. I wanted to learn more, and to record what I learned. Of course, that sounds quite planned and organised. But it wasn't. I just drifted into it, and it has formulated as I have been doing it. This posting is my first attempt to really think about what I am doing, and where I want to go with this. partly because while doing this blog, I have realised just how little I know about coffee. and about the most effective way of brewing it.
What is the difference between roasts and where a bean comes from? What matters more, the roast or the origin? What is the most effective ratio of water to coffee? How long to leave the coffee brewing? Where to store coffee? Which brands are best to buy? I've read some enthusiastic coffee geeks saying that the coffee sold by the main coffee bean companies is no good because roasting should only be done in small batches by artisan roasters. Should I roast at home? I have two coffee grinders - one hand, and one electric. I read that coffee grinders should be burr rather than blade, and manual is better than electric. But
the advice here seems more user friendly and realistic.
So I am using this blog to record my continuing journey into coffee - my discoveries of how to roast, how to grind, how to brew, and which coffees are the best. It's, of course, mainly for me, but I like the idea of sharing it, so others can join in. Please drop a line. Make suggestions. Ask questions. Let's discover together.
