Life’s Rich Grind
Life’s simple pleasures are the best. A satisfying cup of well-prepared coffee is up there among the very finest and it is stealing a lead on its lighter rival. A refreshing tea is often described as the cup that cheers, but coffee beats tea hands down when it comes to giving life a much-needed lift.
Coffee has been my saviour during many dull meetings, it has sparked me up on a fuzzy morning, and it has delivered a swift after-dinner kick towards the next stage of many a long night. I take it strong, black and without sugar. Preferably in double shots and definitely without cream. Don’t even dare mention decaf, as that pale pretender to the heady brew of deep flavour and rich aroma will just not hit the spot.
When I am in the Balkans, I drink so much good coffee. Not all of it is to my taste, I should add. Specifically, Turkish coffee (and the same brew by any other name) is not really for me.
Balkan Coffee Can Be An Acquired Taste
Whenever I am served that style of coffee, I still forget that there could be a substantial slick of thick black coffee lurking at the bottom of my cup and so, all too often, I end up with a bitter surprise on my lips. But I have enjoyed many perfect espresso coffees in Serbia’s cafés; Coffee that is so deliciously rich and uncommonly dark that it hits at the heart of any tiredness or mental haze from enjoying the infamous Belgrade nights. Both Belgrade and Banja Luka have a wonderful café society, where people can sip slowly from tiny cups for hours on end. In Sarajevo, too, I enjoyed beautiful coffee, and at villages and family-run shacks across the region I have been served some great homely brews.
Coffee has not always been my favoured hot drink. When I was younger, it was tea all the way for me, and I do drink more tea than coffee during the week. But, when the time is right, coffee is the only option. It has not always been this way.
As a teenager, we did not have coffee shops such as Starbucks, Costa or the other brands that have taken over high streets across much of the world. We had cafes that served coffee, of course, but the idea of the third space, where people could meet, chat and drink over-priced, over-sweetened coffee had not yet hit our shores. Thankfully.
Of course, that has all changed and I, too, I drink a lot of coffee after dinner in restaurants or at home at the weekend. I still do not drink milky coffee on the street though, out of capped paper cups. I prefer to sit at a table and savour the taste of the coffee rather than rush it.
Coffee Rituals to Rival Tea Ceremony
Tea can come with great ceremony, as I once experienced for myself at a Buddhist temple in Kyoto, Japan. It should be remembered that coffee has its own process, too, that needs to be treated with respect. The best beans, the preferred roast and the right temperature are all essential for a truly good cup of coffee.
While on the subject of coffee, I have to say that I really dislike those little coffee capsules that seem to be on trend right now. Yes, they might be simple and clean to use but, they are just not that nice. They do not taste night. I would rather drink a nice cup of tea than accept a second rate coffee. To my taste, these sealed pots of dust can never be nice and they are just instant coffee with aspirations of greatness. Even instant has its place, though. Sometimes, in some situations, it is the best solution. If offices and work places that do not have coffee machines, then instant coffee can be the most practical way of doing things. That being said, it is not an option we prefer to take up at home.
Coffee making does not need to be a chore and, for a steaming cup of hardcore coffee, it is hard to beat the simple metal coffee maker from Italy. Fill the bottom with water, pack coffee in the middle, and place it on the hob. In short time, delicious fresh coffee bubbles into the top part of the design classic. What could be simpler? Sometimes, though, simple is not good enough, as I experienced a few weeks ago when a nice new espresso machine caught my eye.
Filter Coffee or Espresso?
We already had a functioning filter coffee machine and we freshly grind our beans before making a steaming pot of coffee. But when we are out, we enjoy a short, dark, strong espresso (without sugar), and I thought it would be good to recreate this moment at home. Why I could not live with the metal pot I will not know, but I wanted a shiny new metal machine to match our other kitchen gadgets. Without much thought, I bought it, even though it was pricier than I would have liked. It was Italian and came in a nice retro blue colour, though, so that made it worth the extra cash, I argued in my head. Yes, it looks impressive sat on our already cluttered kitchen surfaces but the issue is that I have hardly used it. No matter how hard I try, how fine I grind the rich roasted Italian beans, it just is not right. I have even watched YouTube videos on how to use this particular machine. I will just have to keep trying, I guess.
To top it all, our filter coffee machine packed up last week. The warning signs had been there – such as lukewarm coffee due to a malfunctioning hotplate – but we did not take any notice. We do not like stewed coffee so the pot is rarely filled to more than we need to drink at any one time, so problems with keeping it warm did not stand out as an issue for us. After all, what can go wrong with such a machine?
Stuck with one dead machine and one that refused to deliver on its promise, I was left with the bleak thought of weekend breakfasts in bed without freshly brewed coffee. So I did what I always do in such situation: I searched online for something shiny and new. Thankfully, I found a nice aluminium machine that appealed to me and, when the courier arrived the next morning, I could not have been more excited. With anticipation of a nice mug of strong coffee, I opened a fresh bag of beans to grind, filled the machine with just enough bottled water and pressed a button to brew the coffee, with as much reverence as I could recall from that tea ceremony in Kyoto. As then, I was not to be disappointed by the resulting brew. I could finally sit back with a good cup of coffee. Damn fine coffee.
Marcus Agar has been commissioned by Wannabe Magazine to write a series of reports. Click here to read in Serbian version or for an interview in English or Serbian.
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