Among my skills in the world have been to be certified after schooling to be a Brewmaster for coffee. This was before coffee became an every street corner mass produced dark crud product and coffee was an art. An art that required learning, techniques to roast and other skills to brew properly…
Unlike being certified to be a coffee jockey as I call them now. A few days in a class and a corporation tries to say you are a Brewmaster? Seriously, I have had to certify many for such corporations! I myself, had to be certified as a Starbucks Brewmaster (One day of classes! ~~)….because, they refused to consider my years of schooling good enough for their black death in a cup! What we do for money to survive in this world…
Sometimes, I miss the old days. I once went to South America and actually procured the coffee for the company I worked for in person. My Goodness, the days of pure unadulterated coffee seem to be gone…
Coffee is not all created equal:
I found the image above to stir within me the past I have lived. I have been a busy man in my life and being a skilled brewmaster for a corporation was one small thing I did. Oh, to fly to South America or like place, no travel issues, just go, just walk out to the four prop airplane and get on and go….walking among the coffee plants. Picking the most wonderful coffee in the world. Coffee is still, but was really serious business and no business worth its weight, would skimp on coffee…
I don’t taste good coffee when I am forced to grab a kiosk coffee on the run. (Heaven forbid that airport/train terminal/coffee kiosk type coffee.) And I see how much money is spent on subpar black crud in a cup….It is very hard to find good coffee anywhere anymore! Yet we can find coffee on every corner and cubbyhole in a big city….cold, hot, syrup laden, fake chemicals of all types within it. You know coffee now a days?
I dream being young enough (in my fifties) again to drive a tiny coffee house to perfection. That coffee house that allows its customers to recede within and forget that the world really sucks…
But, alas, I have done such and done much more. Yet, I still see so much opportunity to do coffee right. Coffee like everything we do, should be done with the best quality product, the best service and the best value for the cost. Never cut corners with anything anywhere in the world and always make it so everyone can utilize that product, no matter how poor or rich we all are!
Even my Nescafe I am sipping on right now is vastly superior to anything any coffee chain turns out at a hundred times the cost it takes me to produce at home…
Oh, to walk a coffee field again and make the deal of a lifetime for coffee that only the gods deserve?
Once Upon a Time, in a world far far away…
WtR