Post-coffee bliss

I wake up before six, having gone to bed around half past nine. The sun's already been up for an hour an half by now! I check the kittens – all five and mum are doin' fine. As soon as the shutters are up, the cats, who have spent the night outside, besiege the house. Before they're let in, I fill seven bowls with a tin and half of cat food. Céleste takes priority – she's feeding for six; her kittens are putting on ten grams of body-mass a day. Once she's tucking in, I open the front door and in they all charge. Like a shot they're all plugged in, tails wagging. Scrapper, Czester, Wenus, Hipek – and Arcturus, who brings individual chunks of food up to his mouth with his paw rather than simply sticking his face into the bowl. No sign of Pacyfik yet.

With the cats engaged, it's time for coffee. Out with the tin. I fill the grinder to the top with 40g of beans (currently, a mix of Colombian and Brazilian, 100% Arabica*, light-to-medium roast, Lidl's Bellarom brand). The task is to convert about half of the beans in the grinder into 20g of ground coffee – enough for my one cup. [Below: the equipment, the beans, the process. I cook on bottled gas; filthy stuff. Had I known in 2018 that I'd be installing solar panels in 2022, I'd have bought an induction hob, not a gas cooker.]

As I turn the handle, ceramic gears grind the beans into medium-fine grains with the consistency of table salt. I count the turns. The counting can be done subconsciously, but it must be accurate. The 120 turns are a precise value. They equates to 20g of ground coffee in the grinder's lower chamber. 

Meanwhile, the kettle has boiled. Some water goes into my coffee cup to heat it up. Then I pour 150g of freshly boiled water into the tank of my Bialetti moka pot**, right up to the safety valve (no higher!). I carefully transfer the freshly ground coffee into the basket, levelling it off gently, though not tamping into down. Steam must be allowed to flow between the grains to extract as much of the coffee flavour as possible

The top gets screwed on to the base; I keep a small black hand-towel to insulate the tankful of boiled water as I turn it tight. Now onto the gas. The lid – crucially – is up, so I can watch the expressed fluid, darkest brown, start to rise up into the upper chamber. And aroma begins to fill the air... Once the liquid starts to pour freely, I raise the pot above the flame, surfing the heat. I'm after a steady flow of coffee – I want to avoid the angry sputtering of superheated steam; this scorches the coffee and gives the beverage a burnt taste, and generates the smell of burnt coffee. The instant that the steady flow of liquid starts to turn into hissing bubbles – that's it! Coffee's ready! 

The hot water has been thrown out of the cup, now hot enough to keep the coffee warm for several minutes longer than a cold one. Carefully, I pour the precious coffee into the hot cup. About 110g of beverage comes out. [There's 10g of water left in the tank, the solid puck in the basket now weighs 40g, so double the weight of the dry ground coffee that went in; the remaining water has turned to steam. The coffee grounds go into the compost.]

Now, to drink. This is a solemn ritual. The internet radio is on; ideal coffee background-listening at this time of the morning happens to be the BBC Shipping Forecast, that familiar litany of sea-areas, compass points and numbers. "Cromarty, Forth, Tyne, Dogger"..."Veering south west, four to six, occasionally moderate... Background volume. Individual words don't intrude on my stream of consciousness, but the reassuring tone, those familiar names – "North Foreland to Selsey Bill, rain at first, thundery later, good occasionally poor"– offer me timeless comfort.

I am a coffee conservative. Not for me capsules, being locked into one system with a finite choice. Nor instant coffee – an abomination, a last resort. The act of grinding coffee beans fresh each morning takes time and effort; extracting a good brew from the Bialetti requires care and focus, but the result is deeply satisfying.

The coffee is sipped, delighted in. It brings life and warmth and drives the morning, sweeping the cobwebs from the mind. The aftertaste lingers around my tastebuds. The whole house smells of coffee. All is good. The day is set fair.

* I noticed about a year ago that many coffee roasters stopped selling their beans as '100% certified Arabica' and replaced that wording with '100% certified coffee', having introduced unspecified amounts of Robusta into a blended product. I roundly reject such low deceit! I will only buy 100% Arabica. I don't care about brand, I care about the bean!

** My moka pot is advertised as being 'three cups'. That's, like, 40g a cup? Ignore the one- and two-cup Bialettis, they make no sense.

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Letters to an Imaginary Grandson (III)

This time five years ago:
Consciousness, memory and familiarity

This time seven years ago:
Classic Volgas, London and Warsaw

This time eight years ago:
Memory and Me

This time nine years ago:
Sticks, carrots and nudge - a proposal

This time 11 years ago:
London vs. Warsaw pt 2: the demographic aspects

This time 15 years ago:
Rail chaos hits Warsaw

This time 16 years ago:
Hurting and healing: a certain symmetry

This time 18 years ago:
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This time 19 years ago:
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