Coffee Crone: Taming Coffee Blog

February 18 2007

Coffee Obsession: Keeping the Eye on the Prize

I got a really nice Email this morning from a woman I don't know who is, like me, a member of the Sweet Maria's home coffee roasting mailing list. She commiserated with me about the broken Rocky grinder (henceforth known as Pebbles) and went on to discuss her own experience as she visited the dark side, aka the world of espresso.

This fit in nicely with an experience I had yesterday with a new friend who has yet to home roast, uses pretty basic brewing equipment, and still manages to absolutely love all things coffee.

I'm pretty much coffee obsessed, and I can (and do) talk endlessly about it. Sometimes I see RT's eyes glaze over as I go on and on and on over the minutia of coffee roasting, coffee brewing, and all things coffee. It doesn't shut me up, but I do notice.

In my defence, I put up with an awful lot of car talk and accounting talk.

It's easy to lose sight of the end point when in the grips of the obsession. No matter how much time, effort, or money someone spends on coffee, the goal really doesn't change. The important thing is that folks find a coffee routine/method/involvement that they enjoy. Both women I wrote about earlier really love their coffee, and are proud of their ability to make some mighty fine brew. I don't think their enjoyment is even a little bit less than my own--in fact, hooray for them for getting what they want without the huge investment in time, effort, and equipment I have made.

It's so easy to lose sight of that which propelled us into the higher tech coffee world--we love coffee and want to be able to consistently make great coffee in our own homes. How we do it, whether it is espresso, drip, yadda yadda is immaterial.