Starbucks, watch your back. I just made a perfect cup of coffee. For the record, this is not the first time I’ve achieved java nirvana. But unlike PC tax-day powder, a flawless cup of joe is as unpredictable as it is subjective.
This particular brew was made with a mix of Park City Coffee Roasters “Local Secret” and French Roast. I added a dab of Hollow Tree, a Utah creamed honey — essential — and a big splash of half and half. There are so many other factors involved that may or may not have affected the final outcome. I have no idea what they are. Sometimes, miracles just happen.
My grandfather introduced me to coffee when I was about seven. I remember sitting at the kitchen table watching him smoke Pall Malls and drink Sanka out of a mint-green Fire King mug. He put lots of milk and sugar in it. He let me have a sip. And so it began.
My coffee obsession didn’t really take hold until I was 16, working weekends at a submarine sandwich shop in Rochester, New York. My best friend Sue worked there, too. In between slicing cold cuts and tomatoes, we’d slump into an avocado-green Naugahyde booth in the back, recovering from the 12-pack of Miller ponies we’d consumed the night before. Back then, the weight of the world hung over us like a 17-pound chunk of deli meat. And, speaking of hungover, the only cure was a styrofoam cup of brown water with a heaping spoonful of Coffeemate and three packs of Sweet ‘n’ Low.
But times have changed. Coffee has become more complicated. I mean, it has to, right? How else could I justify paying $8.50 for an oatmilk latte at Cupla? To steal a great line from “When Harry Met Sally,” there are two kinds of coffee people. Low maintenance and high maintenance. I’m the worst kind: I’m high maintenance, but I think I’m low maintenance.
Mama, don’t let your babies grow up to be cowboys. Let them be doctors and lawyers. And pour-over baristas: Those guys approach a mound of beans with the unwavering concentration of a nuclear physicist. Neutron stars are no match for the exotic forms found in a bag of Volcanica Ethiopian Yirgacheffe. Never mind the temperature at which cold fusion occurs; do you have any idea of the forces at work in a perfectly executed ground-coffee bloom?
I didn’t really, but definitely wanted to try this at home. I bought myself a Chemex coffee maker. The Pyrex glass container was designed by German inventor Dr. Peter Schlumbohm and became popular in WWII as Americans were eschewing metal and plastic in support of the war effort. I imagined baby-faced G.I. Joes in their foxholes, boiling coffee water over a tiny campfire while smoking Camels and shaving out of their helmets. The Chemex made a great cup of coffee, but the 20 minutes it took to get there ultimately put me over the edge.
Then there was the fling I had with a one-cup Bialetti Moka espresso maker. I’d worked on a TV shoot with a sexy Italian cinematographer who’d brought his own tiny espresso pot to the set every day. Screw craft service coffee out of a Dixie cup. I could barely understand a word he said, but the language of caffe amore transcended earthly borders. I bought my own Bialetti the moment I got home. That lasted a few weeks until I got tired of drinking coffee out of a shotglass.
A couple of years later, I was living in Paris. The tiny studio I was staying in had no coffee maker. Since I was there for work, I didn’t have all day to sit in a café hoping that a server would notice me. It was DIY or rien. Pro tip: Do not walk into a kitchen supply store on the Champs-Élysée and ask to buy a French press. After giving you a look that will coarsely grind your overly enthusiastic American soul into a 21-gram pile of compost, the clerk will begrudgingly hand you a Chambord cafetière.
As much as I love making my morning java, sometimes it’s better when someone else does the job. Which was why on Sunday morning, I decided to take my dog Riley over to Lucky Ones in the Park City library. When I arrived, the manager, Taylor, was there, but the friends I’d hoped to see, Alex and Preslee, were not. Taylor handed me a regular coffee with a splash of milk. I started to walk over to the comfy chairs just as Preslee came through the front door. She flashed a huge grin and asked if she could give me and Riley a hug. I took a sip from my paper cup as I chatted with my friend.
It was the perfect cup of coffee.