I come by my love of coffee honestly, raised by an Italian grandmother who kept a hand-cranked coffee grinder on the shelf above her cast iron stove and was never happier than when she managed to get her hands on real green beans to roast herself. Most of the time, though, she settled for whatever roasted coffee the supermarket carried. Turning the crank on that old grinder was one of my favorite chores as a kid. The aroma alone was better than most people’s finished cup.
Even Nana, a woman who rewashed dishes that had already come out of the dishwasher because she didn’t trust a machine to do it right, eventually gave in to buying pre-ground coffee in a can. She didn’t have much choice. By the time I was a teenager, whole bean coffee had all but disappeared from ordinary supermarket shelves. My tastebuds, trained early on real freshly roasted coffee, learned to accept whatever dark brown liquid tasted vaguely of coffee, though I still preferred mine strong enough to stand a spoon in. My friends learned fast never to let me make the pot; they wanted the pale, watery stuff, the kind you could read a newspaper through. There were small mercies here and there, a great espresso at a relative’s house, a perfect cup after a good meal, but mostly I made do with “just coffee.”
Rediscovering coffee
That changed in 1982, when I walked into a tiny storefront coffeehouse and fell for coffee all over again. Ethiopian Yirgacheffe became my obsession, though I was happy to be talked into others. I bought a French press and a real grinder, feeling a little self-conscious about both, like I was performing sophistication rather than just making coffee. My husband courted me, in part, with pounds of specialty beans. I kept the drip machine around because it was convenient, and honestly, once you start with good beans, even a basic drip machine makes a genuinely good cup. But the best coffee I made in those years came out of a battered stovetop moka pot I picked up at a yard sale for a dollar.
In 1999, a coworker named Peter pushed things further. He belonged to a small coffee cooperative that experimented constantly with different blends and roasts from all over the world, and once or twice a week he’d bring in something new, brew a pot, and share it around the office. Under his casual tutelage I learned to actually taste coffee: the fruity notes, the woody undertones, the earthy hints, all the complexity that wind and soil and sun and rainfall stamp into a bean before it ever reaches a roaster. Peter introduced me to Fair Trade coffee, estate coffee, single-origin coffee, and eventually, with his encouragement, to roasting my own.
The actual confession
All of that is really just credentials. I’m not a newcomer to coffee. I’m no barista and no roasting expert, but I know a thing or two, and I’ve had my share of genuinely sublime coffee moments. What I don’t have is any patience for coffee snobbery. I am, by choice, a coffee heretic. When people ask my advice, my honest answer is always the same: drink what you like.
Coffee is a matter of personal taste, full stop. If a basic drip machine makes you happy, that’s not a lesser choice, it’s just your choice. I’ve stopped trying to talk anyone out of a percolator; if you like it perked, perk it. I’ve even given up trying to convince people that “real” coffee would ruin them for whatever they currently enjoy, because if you genuinely like what you’re drinking, it was never swill to begin with. So here, for what it’s worth, is my actual coffee manifesto.
Coffee is good. Good coffee is better. Good coffee made exactly the way you like it is about as close to nirvana as a beverage gets. Don’t let anyone, including any article on a coffee website, intimidate or shame you out of your own preferences. There’s no shame in a percolator, a pod machine, or a can of pre-ground coffee from the supermarket if that’s genuinely what you enjoy. It’s all in your own taste buds. Buy what you like. Drink what you like. And don’t let anyone tell you your coffee isn’t good enough.
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