And it helps to focus for some reason. I find I think twice as fast and twice as focused after a good meal and a couple of cups of coffee. If you skip the meal, then you just get a super caffeine high which lasts some 15 minutes and then you burn out. But whatever.
So there is a balance involved in drinking coffee. A balance of solid and liquid. Of drink and eat. Like the natural flows of the universe.
There is a certain macho factor too. Like when I'm working, I don't want a mamby-pamby cup of Starbucks or Green Mountain coffee! I want a cup of coffee made from dirt. I want to put my spoon in my coffee and have full confidence that it will stand up in the coffee and not touch any of the sides. The coffee should be either scalding hot, or arctic cold. It should be black as night, bitter, and heavily acidic. You should be able to use the same cup of coffee that you would normally drink in the morning to take the rust off your car.
Most people don't really appreciate a good cup, though. I must confess, I am much more discerning with tea than I am with coffee.
According to legend, the first coffee was discovered by a goatherd in Eastern Africa.
He noticed that his goats had eaten from a shrub, and that they stayed awake, and active, all night. He tried to eat the fruits himself, and found that it was revitalizing.
The goatherd told a monk who was passing by at the time of his discovery, and the monk crushed the fruits and poured water over them to make a drink - the first cup-a-joe was made.
While working in a university astronomy department, I ran into a pair of graduate students who were heavily into experimentation with coffee as a drug to aid them staying awake for long nights. They found this lightly roasted african coffee that just gave me the shakes, and I was no lightweight in the caffeine department at that time. Ten minutes after imbibing, I had to use one hand to steady the other while typing away on my terminal. They had also presented the brew to a relative coffee virgin, one of their professors. It was a lecture to remember.
For the real coffee experience you have to go to the Bedouin, the desert nomads who live in Egypt, the Negev and Jordan.
Traditionally coffee was very expensive as it had to be carried by camel from Africa.
The process starts with fresh beans being roasted over an open fire on a long metal rod called a 'mihmas'. They are then left to cool in a wooden scoop called a 'mibradi'. Once the beans are cooled they are then crushed in a tall wooden pestle and mortar, a mihbash. The tribesman crushing the beans will do so to a rhythmic pattern to inform his neighbours that they have a guest and to invite them to his tent. The coffee grounds are then set to boil in a pot, a dallah, over an open flame, with cardamon being added as it boils. When it is ready it is poured in to a fresh pot and served in small cups.
A guest will be offered three rounds of coffee, each one with its own symbolism and meaning. The first cup is called finjan al dayf - the guest cup. It is served to welcome the guest to their tent and as a sign of trust, the theory being that you aren't going to fight someone that you've just had coffee with. Then will be served the second cup, finjan al sayf - the sword cup. This cup is a toast to the honor and courage of the men present. It also marks the resolution of a pending conflict. The third cup, finjan al kayf - the pleasure cup, is served purely for the enjoyment of drinking fine coffee. Each round of coffee is spaced out between conversation, stories and, on special occasions, poetry and music.
Because of the importance of the coffee drinking ritual it can also be used to insult your guest or you host. If the host wished to insult a guest, or to show that he had been wronged, then he will pour a cup and then tip it on to the ground infront of his guest. If the host had served a cup of coffee as a toast to one of his guests and the guest were to spill the cup out instead of drinking it then it would indicate that there was trouble between him and the host.
The Bedouin also say that coffee should be:
Dark as Night Strong as Man and Bitter as Married Life
Coffee with cardamom is also one of lifes pleasures. It's best servered in small espresso cups or small glasses. It should be thick and slighly sweet, it should also leave you very pleasantly wired for hours to come.
The genus Coffea is a member of the Rubiaceae, family which includes more than 500 genera and 6,000 species of tropical trees and shrubs. Species of Coffea can range from small shrubs to tall trees, and the leaves can range in color from purple to yellow.There are some 25 major species of Coffea, but the beans that are used to make the drink mostly come from Coffea arabica and Coffea canephora (var. robusta). Arabica coffee accounts for about 70% of the world's coffee production.
A smidgen of history
Coffee was introduced to Europe in the 17th century. It came from Arabia, via Turkey. The Arabs are considered to have been the world's first coffee drinkers: in Arabic countries the drinking of coffee was already a daily ritual in the 15th century. When European explorers reached Arabia in the 15th and 16th century, they soon discovered the coffee houses, where a drink was served that was both invigorating and tasty. In 1615 the first ship carrying coffee sailed from Turkey to Europe. The first European coffee house was opened in 1645 in Venice.
Growing coffee
Coffee is grown in most countries around the equator, where there is a tropical or subtropical climate. Coffee trees need an even temperature (between 20 and 25 degrees C) and grow up to heights of 2000 metres. Generally, the higher the tree grows, the better the coffee. Coffee trees grow during the wet season, and rest during the dry season.
From coffee plant to ground coffee
Mature coffee trees bear fruit in clusters along the branches of the trees, typically once a year. The fruit, that is referred to as 'berry' or 'cherry' turns red when it is ready to be harvested, and contains two flat seeds. These are the coffee beans. Coffee is harvested by hand, by strip picking or selective picking. Strip picking means the entire crop is picked at one pass. This means that berries of different ripeness are all picked at the same time. Selective picking means that several passes are made among the coffee trees, in which only the fully ripe berries are taken. This takes more time and is thus more expensive, and is only used for arabica beans, which are considered the best beans.
After picking, the beans are processed. There are two methods of processing (preparing the bean for roasting). The dry method means that the cherries are spread out on a concrete, brick or matting surface to dry. They are raked at regular intervals to prevent fermentation. If rain falls or the temperature drops, the beans have to be covered for protection. When the cherries are dry enough, they are stored in silos where their moisture content drops even further. In the wet method a pulping machine is used to separate the bean from the skin and pulp of the cherry. The skin and pulp are washed away with water and the lighter, immature beans are separated from the heavier mature beans. The beans are then stored in fermentation tanks to remove the slimy layer that still covers the beans. The beans are then dried and kept until export. Both the beans processed with the dry method and those processed with the wet method are hulled after drying, to remove the dried outer coverings of the original cherries (dry method) or to remove the parchment layer left on the beans (wet method).
The green beans are graded, sorted and exported. Then comes the roasting, a heat treatment which transforms the green beans into aromatic brown nuggets that are sold whole or ground. At an air temperature of about 180 degrees Celsius (550 degrees Fahrenheit), the sugars in the beans caramelize and the beans slowly turn dark brown. This process, that is called pyrolysis is the most important part of the processing of the beans, as this is the moment that determines the final taste and quality of the coffee. The darker the beans are roasted, the stonger the taste of the coffee. When the beans are done, they are cooled abruptly with air and water to stop the pyrolysis process. The roasting of the beans is performed in the consumer countries rather than the production countries (and preferrably as close in time as possible to consumption), because roasted beans lose their flavour rather quickly.
Decaffeinated coffee
Some people prefer their coffee without the staying awake effects of caffeine. For these people there is decaffeinated coffee. Decaffeinating coffee is done by removing the caffeine from the coffee beans before roasting. This can be accomplshed in several ways. One way is by soaking the green beans in water. The caffeine dissolves in the water and is then pumped through a bed of active carbon. Afterwards the beans are dried, cooled, and roasted in the usual way. Another way of decafeinating is by using DCM (dichloremethane). The beans are soaked in this extraction medium and the caffeine dissolves in it. The beans are then steamed to remove the DCM, dried and roasted. After decaffeinating, the caffeine content of the beans has dropped from 1 - 2.5% to 0.1%.
Preparing coffee
There are many different ways of making the drink called coffee, but they all involve grinding the roasted coffee beans and then bringing the ground coffee into contact with hot water. The most basic way of making coffee is boiling water with ground coffee, then pouring into cups... but this way means there will be lots of ground stuff in your drink. More sophisticated methods use filters to separate the dregs from the drink. The most complicated way must be with the espresso machine, that with a pressure of 9 bar forces the water through finely gound coffee, the most entertaining way the glass percolator...
I think about the beans used in that coffee . . . Those beans grew under a sun that's familiar, but they grew inside of an Earth I'll never know. I want to know what they know. The coffee beans I drank three hours ago. But not now. I added my cream and sugar to other cups in the same glass. Three days ago. But for some reason I'm stuck on this half cup of mud-colored liquid. I have to drink it, or add more, or leave it there, paid for but unconsumed. I'd like to drink it just to say I finished the cup, but the coffee isn't enjoyable to me right now. Exposure to the air has taken all its heat to the point where I can no longer appreciate its flavor . . . That or my tastes have changed. Maybe if I drink that coffee I'll be sick. Maybe I'll throw it all up in the bathroom. I should just wait until I want to drink it. But by then it might have aged too much.
The cream I put in there is from cows from my land. The sugar was harvested in my country's fields. But these coffee beans . . . they're something else.
Maybe I should drink the stuff and be done with it. I've been in this diner for three days. Is there any truth in this coffee at all? If there is, it's gotta be in this half cup of mud-colored liquid. I taste it and it freezes on my tongue. I choke it down but there's no way the rest of that will make it. The waiter gestures at me with his pot of black coffee. His face inquires without his voice.
Gratefully,
