on my perfect relationship with unadulterated espresso:
i started drinking coffee in earnest after i started working for starbucks oh so many years ago when i was young and innocent. every new initiate has to undergo the good old 'bucks boot camp. 20 hours of intensive training in the starbucks 'process'. if i remember correctly, a shot couldn't be used unless it finished between 18 and 23 seconds. it was a good system because the shots were always thick, sweet, and creamy -- good by themselves, and great for cappuccinos and lattes.
we had to learn a lot of terminology. in addition to the thousands of people who had simple tastes, there were a few dozen regulars who liked the obscure drinks. espresso with a dash of steamed milk foam for instance -- the espresso macchiato, a drink ordered infrequently. in fact, almost never ordered. except for one guy who worked at or attended a nearby university. tragically, starbucks restricted the definition of this drink. unmixed layers of cream, foam, and espresso sounds like a much more delish concoction.
during 'bucks boot camp, we had to drink a shitload of coffee. espresso by itself. foam by itself. steamed milk by itself. lattes, cappuccinos, mochas, americanos (yum!), coffee made with a french press, and different roasts made with their industrial drip brewers -- kenyan (not my favorite), french roast (yum!), italian (yum!), sumatran (yum!), etc.. ( ... yum ... ). obviously, we didn't have enough time to try everything during the 20 hours of 'bucks boot camp.
they had a bunch of other things they wanted to teach us. the starbucks system was that of a well-oiled retail machine. they must have spent buckets of cash figuring it out. so, we were relentlessly encouraged to try _everything_ at some point. all drinks on the job were free. every employee got one free pound of coffee a week. we got a 30% discount on all starbucks merchandise.
basically they were corporate crack dealers. i was a full-time student with no real marketable skills or work experience when i joined the starbuckians for a nine-month tour.
_holy shit_.
opening shifts started at 5:00am. sweet part was that my working day was over by noon usually. sometimes i had shifts for the full eight and a half hours. i still got out at 1:30. i must say this, however -- when i had to start my shift at five in the morning, my ass was dead-tired. some days it felt like my ass might fall back to sleep and get left behind while the rest of me stumbled unconsciously to work before getting dressed or brushing my teeth. or putting on my glasses. actually, i'd always remember to put those on. if i couldn't find them, i'd just get lost in my own apartment while looking for them.
obviously, i needed a pick-me-up. within an hour and a half, i 'd be sweating in front of a huge espresso machine with a line of addicts straight out the damned door. bitching and moaning. looking at their watches. tapping their feet. being bitchy. by the end, if i hadn't had my fix yet and i had five seconds to spare before that chattering mob of locust-pods from mars came crashing through the door demanding their double tall lattes, i'd have locked myself in the bathroom and mainlined a shot on the spot and snorted the grinds even.
time was of the essence. all the pastries had to be set out. all the equipment had to be assembled and set up. we were done (almost always) by the time the store opened. barely. the easiest way to get what i needed was to pack away as many shots as possible while we got things ready. triple espresso usually did the trick. i worked that espresso machine like a god afterwards.
after a while i needed it just to get through the day. people's lives were at stake.
emily0 is right that poverty once played a factor in my choice of unadulterated coffee as my preferred beverage of choice. milk is mighty expensive when you have to work for half an hour to earn it. this is not the case now. i drink plenty of milk. it's just that i am creature of habit and prefer to drink coffee without milk or sugar because i learned to love it like that. i like cappuccinos and lattes. i even like emily0's coffee-flavored hot milk sometimes. but my favorite is and shall always be pure coffee.
i feel like one can't appreciate the true beauty of the bean when mixing its flavor with other things.
on the other subject that i would write more about if this post weren't already too long:
i say things like the p-word in jest in the company of friends because i'm sure they'll understand that i'm using it ironically.
1 comment:
my dad has been an intense coffee-drinker for his whole life. he never changes his method. it's the one routine in my life i count on: how my father boils the water in a kettle, puts a whole lot of grinds in the same glass measuring cup he's used since i were a child, adds boiling water, waits a few minutes, then pours the brewed stuff through an honest-to-god paper-lined plastic filter that sits on top of his cup. it's as low-tech as coffee gets and strong as hell.
only he got a french press for christmas. and i showed him how to use it. and he tried it. and now he only makes his coffee like that.
so for the last, say, thirty years, my dad has made three to six cups of coffee each day using the same utensils, the same coffee - everything. but since xmas, he's using high-grade espresso beans and a french press. it's more than a mite disturbing for me - yeek!
i guess that's his midlife crisis. coulda bin worse. coulda gotten into stupid cars. instead, he changed his ingrained coffee routine and started collecting miniature soldiers offa eBay. (that's another story.)
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