My relationship with coffee probably began in my mother’s womb. She may deny it, but I am pretty sure she drank more coffee than was advised or allowed in the 1980s. My mother is from a very small town in the middle of the mountains on the Pacific side of Mexico, very close to a semi-active volcano. My memories of visiting my grandmother are actually memories of smells: the smell of ashes and burnt food cooked with wood, ashes in the meat and the tortillas, and coffee.
My mother would probably say that my first encounter with coffee was at 3 years old. There may be a physical picture, but the image that lives in my head is of a little kid, using my small hands to mix baby food into coffee with milk, just to create the messiest concoction possible. As she would gladly tell you many times, I was unable to drink milk from just a few days old, not because I was lactose intolerant, but because I did not like the flavor of it. So she tried -very hard- different ways to mask the flavor, and one of them was coffee.
Coffee in my childhood was always a supporting character in the main story. It wasn’t even a fancy or pleasant character; it was a soluble powder that required unhealthy amounts of sugar and a hint of milk to make it taste good. I loved it at the time, and I’m not ashamed of my humble beginnings—it was all I knew. On rainy afternoons in May, I was responsible for making a two-block journey to the store to buy bulk cookies and a single or double cup package of coffee for me and my mom. The coffee was a pretext, a small escape when money was short.
I was not unfamiliar with good coffee, though. Those occasions arose during funerals, very occasional restaurant visits, but mainly at my grandmother’s house in the small town, where the coffee was prepared in the Mexican way known as “café de olla,” which simply means “pot coffee.” It’s a mix of coffee grounds, cinnamon, and piloncillo (solidified cane juice), which came from the closest sugar cane factories, adding more ashes to the already volcanic town. I still enjoy café de olla sometimes, although it’s too sweet for my current taste.
Fast forward, I went to university, and as we say in Latin America, to be young and not revolutionary is almost a biological contradiction. I was involved in subversive (although completely legal) student progressive movements, which often involved late-night meetings or visits to local coffee shops frequented by politicians and elderly people. It was during this time that my taste for coffee began to refine, to the point where I completely eliminated sugar to free my taste buds to a new world of sensations. It was also a time when I worked for a newspaper as a graphic designer, every evening after college, ending my shift after midnight. It was a time of coffee, not only to keep me awake but also to socialize with other journalists, especially one who was almost 70 years old at the time. He meticulously prepared his coffee each evening in his own drip machine, and through him, I learned about the care one should give to the preparation. I am afraid to think he is no longer living in this world, so I prefer to think his passion for coffee and the art of its preparation still lives somewhere.
After college, I moved to another city to escape, explore the world, and devour it. This involved not only living alone but also experimenting with more complex flavors. I became the designated coffee maker in my 2-bedroom, 5-person apartment, and I was the coffee officer in the startup where I worked. I experimented with different types, amounts, and grind levels, each morning before everyone arrived. This was a time of explosion—of coffee with shisha in hookah lounges, of learning the thermodynamics of plastic and water to prepare coffee while tent-camping on the beach. This was also a time of learning about coffee regions, altitudes, humidity, and traveling to places like Michoacán and Chiapas, world-famous for coffee quality in Mexico. From then on, coffee was no longer a second-class character in my world.
Coffee was no longer the nostalgic drink of funerals as my older relatives started passing away. I experimented with different preparation methods, like the “Cuban press” (aka Italian press) that I acquired shortly after getting married and used to prepare coffee for my wife every morning. Or the French press, which I got after we adopted a dog, and which I used before she asked me to go for a walk.
We moved to the US in 2016 to the Puget Sound, without knowing that Seattle is somewhat of a coffee capital of the world. I enjoy visiting local coffee shops (technically Starbucks can be considered local, although that’s not what I mean). With just the two of us in a new country and shortly after she got pregnant, I received for my birthday one of those very fancy-looking coffee dripper filters for one person and a spice grinder.
I still went back to Mexico a few times for vacations, one of them to make artisanal coffee. And by that, I don’t mean just making a cup of black magma; I mean cleaning the beans with only air and gravity, roasting them with just an iron pot, and grinding them with a corn-grinder machine. I still envision creating my own brand in the future.
I have been fortunate in this life, I am grateful. I recently acquired a brand new Breville Barista, and I enjoy making coffee every day. I sometimes joke that I could live without everything—beer, meat, seafood, sugar—but not coffee. But it’s not really a joke.
You could say that I am more of a coffee snob today; I only buy whole bean bags, and I haven’t touched soluble coffee in years. I have changed, yes, but coffee around me has changed as well. While I may have become more discerning in my taste for coffee, it’s the essence of coffee itself that has transformed, enriching my life in ways I never imagined possible.