Coffee

I make pour-over coffee every morning with a Chemex and an overpriced matte black gooseneck kettle. Meghan calls me a coffee snob and laughs when we are on road trips and I pull out my coffee-making travel kit to hand grind beans and boil water on a gas stove at rest stops or gas stations. But she’s the first one to turn her nose to gas station coffee and say, “I’m not drinking that trash. The beans are burnt.” She’s not wrong and I love her for it. 

I don’t consider myself a snob, but most snobs usually don’t, preferring terms like connoisseur or aficionado. But, really, at the heart of it, I’m a snob. I buy my 5 lbs. of fair trade, organic coffee from an online company called Grounds for Change and I’d be lying if I didn’t admit I’m buying a certain amount of moral high ground, too. It’s smart marketing to couple addiction with a sense of moral superiority. Though, I’m still not convinced there are palates out there discerning enough to taste notes of butter, peach, and roasted nuts. Tastes like marketing bullshit to me. My undiscerning tongue operates more along the spectrum of light to dark, smooth to muddy, clean to burnt, good to bad. I’m still operating on the bullshit continuum, but more on the believable side. So, here’s to the bullshit continuum and good coffee. Which is another way of saying, we all make shit up and think we are better than that Pumpkin Spice-toting goon talking into his headphones about crypto and Elon Musk’s Asperberger’s. Fact is, we aren’t. We’re all that guy in some aspect. I just prefer to take my stand with coffee.  

-be cool and care