Coffee is good for us – but coffee snobbery is not
How cheering to be told yet again that coffee is good for the body as well as the soul. OK, so it “may” lower risk of liver disease, stroke and some cancers, but when you inhale a dawn hit of freshly ground Java, it’s impossible not to feel a little bit immortal.
Did I say Java? I actually meant Ethiopian Yirgacheffe. But only because I’ve run out of Kenya Peaberry.
I’m a crashing coffee snob. Actually, I prefer the term “connoisseur”, but anyone who has ever been to a coffee shop with me would beg to differ and, sometimes, to leave. A red mist descends when the coffee grinds aren’t tamped down properly, the metal jug overheats or the espresso stream doesn’t have the correct dimensions.
“What are you doing, you fool?” I’ve been known to cry. OK, yell. “That stream of liquid is only supposed to be the width of a mouse’s tail!”
I know this because I once undertook a coffee-making course. “Curse” might be more apposite; too much knowledge is a dangerous thing, plus I happen to be married to a man who only drinks Nescafé.
His pet obsession is bread. In fact, he feels about sourdough the way I do about coffee, which is just stupid and unfathomable. Whenever I brightly suggest “going out for coffee”, he looks nonplussed, as though I have suggested we creosote our neighbour’s fence for a laugh. Mind you, at least his pain de campagne keeps him indoors.
In London, back in 1674, the Women’s Petition Against Coffee bemoaned how the “newfangled, abominable, heathenish liquor called coffee” had transformed their industrious, virile men into effeminate babbling layabouts who idled away their time in coffee houses.
I’m not sure the same applies to wives, but I do like idling my time to the thrilling buzz, gurgle and whoosh of a Gaggia. Except these days, I make my own coffee at home and listen to the sound effects on Youtube.