It’s really a love-hate relationship I have with coffee.
There’s the awakening scent and the bitter taste of burnt beans that needs mounds of sugar, cocoa powder and two percent milk to make it bearable.
I get extra energy from it during finals week.
I’ve forked over three euros (that’s like five bucks) for an 8-ounce cup of it in Paris’ Charles de Gaulle Airport.
It can be the social hub of a Friday night in my hometown of Rancho Palos Verdes, where Starbucks’ 9:30 p.m. closing time makes it the ultimate late-night hangout, or it can be because of all those $1.85 charges (those add up) on my monthly CitiBank credit card statement.
Maybe I’m just not sophisticated enough to understand coffee.
It’s like that indie teenager and I’m like its middle-America dad who just “doesn’t get it.” I’m too set in my ways to understand what it is about this beverage that so many people drink it.
People boast about their favorite roast (forgive the rhyme) and how “bold” it is, how the coffee has “body” and is “rich.”
What?
Relax, it’s just coffee ““ a hot, black and nasty means for just a couple more hours of energy.
I never understood the whole coffee thing. What’s the difference between Peet’s and Starbucks, between Maxwell House and Espresso Profeta?
All I know is that the best part of waking up is Folgers in my cup.
So I figured I should put my judgements aside and try to see, or rather taste, past the icky black nectar of finals week.
But before I begin my journey through the dark world of coffee drinkers, I needed to brush up on some coffee logistics.
Beans, grinding, roasting, dark, light, house ““ these are all foreign to me. All I know is decaf or not, cream and sugar.
I needed to know more before I began my exploration on the bean this quarter.
The zig-zag through Westwood Village coffee shops ensued as I tried to learn what I can. And, although a number of shops deferred to management, Googling or lacked an in-depth knowledge about the workings of the magical bean, I was able to come away with some working knowledge for my endeavor.
The quality of coffee improves when roasted with filtered water, Ashley Morris, a shift supervisor at the Westwood Village Starbucks told me. Well, good thing I get my water from the water cooler when brewing a pot in the office. Morris added that accurate measurements, a clean machine and the quality of the grinding also factor in. It’s also important not to let coffee sit around for more than a week, and to keep the beans out of the fridge.
There’s also the difference between dark and light roast, something I’ve never understood. Maybe it’s because I’ve been raised not to judge things by the color of their skin. Well, with coffee, you do.
In short, dark roast is when the coffee beans are roasted longer than light. Though less caffeinated, dark roast has a “stronger” flavor, whatever that means. I guess I’ll find out soon enough.
Peet’s Coffee was offering samples of French press coffee, a considerably stronger coffee made in a low-tech manner.
Rather than brewing it through a normal electric coffeemaker, they pour the coarsely ground-up beans in a big glass mug and slowly press down on a rod attached to a mesh screen. When the screen pushes the coffee down as much as it can go, they let the boiling water and grounds festoon for a thicker, stronger brew.
Through exploring the world of coffee-drinking, I hope more than anything to hear the stories of those around me. Just through jumping in and out of a few coffee shops, I was able to see plenty of interesting faces I’ve come to know through life in Westwood. I saw a parking enforcement officer who helped me out when I got in a hit-and-run accident on Sunset Boulevard. Men’s tennis coach Billy Martin made an appearance for his morning joe, much to the delight of my close friend Brantley Watson, the Daily Bruin’s men’s tennis beat writer. I even saw the banker who set up a savings account for me last year.
Such was the diverse array of folks that pass through the coffee shops in and around UCLA. So many people are on the bean, making coffee a social epicenter. We may not have romantic Parisian cafes budding around campus, but the coffee shops here, both chain and mom-and-pop, offer a center of conversation for all sorts of people.
So, I hope to learn from them about coffee and, at the risk of sounding melodramatic, about life.
Here’s to my quarter on the bean.
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If you have any interesting coffee stories, e-mail Mashhood at
fmashhood@media.ucla.edu._