The Best cups of Coffee

I was busy watching The Pacific the other day, that war series where you get to see all the shooting and blood in high definition, and this war hero guy was chatting up a girl over coffee. They started talking about the best cup of coffee, which was really moving because I love coffee. And because her best cup involved her dead father and his best cup involved almost dying on a beach somewhere in the Pacific.

Good coffee on it’s own does move me, no jokes, but I guess I realised that the best cups of coffee do not depend entirely on the brew, but rather the stories in which they are drank.

So I decided to start compiling a list of my ten best cups of coffee, and the stories behind them.

1) The percolated snorer on the farm

I don’t know when I became such a coffee snob, I think it was around the time I entered the ministry. It’s almost like my conversion, a long and winding story with a few step-changes but no real date to write on my bible cover. But just like my first vivid memory of God I do have a vivid memory of the first appearance of good coffee.

We grew up on a farm, a 24 acre piece of land with no crops and no animals except the many dogs who were more like family. It was the best possible place for a boy to grow up: camping in the veld, riding bikes in the mountains, shooting birds with catties, chasing cows, shooting cow patties with catties, building forts underground and in the bush and way too high above the ground in a bluegum tree.

It was quiet, a little too quiet sometimes. Friends from school didn’t ever seem to be just passing by the plot in Bronkhorstfontein. Sure I had my family, but the reality is that having visitors was a really exciting event.

And they came every second Friday night, lots of them. My parents played cards, which may not sound like much but it’s this Dutch game which I’ve found to be super fun. You should try it. So at the end of every week they would get together with an Aunt and Uncle, an Ouma and Oupa and a Grand-Aunt and Grand-Uncle to play cards. Of course cousins would join, which meant we kids had some visitors too. It also meant we had a feast of sorts to look forward to every week.

That Dutch card game is great on it’s own, but it’s greater with lots of snacks: sweets, chocolates, peanuts and biltong. We were too young to play, but not too young to eat the snacks. And also not too young to drink the coffee brewed specifically for these occasions.

The method was an old fashioned percolator, the one that keeps pumping the coffee around in a pot with a glass lid. It always smelled great, like all coffee does, but the best was that it sounded great. It reminded me of my dad, snoring away in a regular rhythm. Like anything that resembles a dad it brought some sort of comfort and familiarity and familial love.

I’ve since come to learn that it’s certainly not the best way to make coffee; breaking some golden rules of coffee brewing like reusing grinds and applying heat for far too long. But I guess that’s proof that the most memorable cups of coffee are the ones drank in the midst of the most meaningful stories.

So that’s how it all began, my life and my coffee affinity. I’m grateful for every cup of roasted, ground and espressed arabica beans. But I’m more grateful for how my story started, and the people that filled the pages and made the story memorable.

Here’s to them, and the ol’ snorer on the farm.