Forgive my whiff of candour, dear ol’ coffee bores
ABOUT a week ago I wrote about trying to remember the aroma of good coffee before coffee shops started producing espresso and cappuccino. Coffee seemed so simple then. Many of my friends have recently become coffee experts – I hesitate to say “coffee bores” because obviously none of my friends are bores – and several of them now own computerised coffee machines of various degrees of complication.
Some of these contraptions grind the beans, produce hissing clouds of steam and measure out the precise amount of coffee, water, steam and froth.
Some use little pre-packed plastic and aluminium capsules of coffee, which produce perfect cups of coffee and add significantly to the world’s plastic trash mountain. Some swear by the coffee plunger and others say only a coffee percolator will do the trick.
Some insist only a proper paper coffee filter will produce the goods.
Some are prepared to pay many times more for their coffee machine than they are for their fridge or stove.
Now there’s a tea controversy brewing in the elegant country villages of England. Somebody wrote a rather sarcastic letter to the local newspaper saying all this fuss about coffee was just silly. Tea is the proper drink for the British, he said. “All a tea drinker needs is a tea bag and a mug of hot water.”
Oh boy, did this raise a few hackles! “Shocked” of Taunton wrote: “Good Heavens! I nearly choked on my cornflakes when I read this.
“Doesn’t he know about warming the tea-pot, boiling the water (which must be fresh and not previously boiled) selecting a tea cup – and saucer of course – appropriate for the time of day (you do not use a breakfast cup at tea time, for example) and using loose leaf tea, NOT tea bags, letting it brew for the correct amount of time before pouring it and serving it with lump sugar if you take sugar with your tea? The very thought of a ‘tea bag and a mug of hot water’ sends shudders down my spine.”
Shocked didn’t even touch on the age-old controversy about whether to put the tea or the milk into the cup first.
It seems you can be just as fussy, or as casual, about any drink as you want to be.
I have several wine experts among my friends and if you really want to start a passionate discussion, mention the correct temperature at which the various kinds of wine should be served. You can then sit back and drink in peace for the rest of the evening while the “experts” waste good drinking time yacking away (while the wine reaches room temperature anyway).
Last Laugh
A platoon of soldiers was lost in the desert and the sergeant sent a party out to search for supplies. After a while they returned and reported: “We have good news and bad news. The bad new is all we could find was camel dung.
“The good news is that there’s enough of it to last us for months.”