Splash No. 235 - On Coffee

On Coffee
Ever since some time in the 15th century, people have been roasting beans, grinding them up, and mixing them with hot water to get some nice hot bean juice. Throughout history, people have been fascinated by the beverage, which has grown from niche local drink to one of the most often consumed drinks in the world.
Despite the fact that I grew up in a tea drinking household, coffee’s appeal found me in high school and truly latched on when I went to college. My initial exposure to coffee was similar to most peoples’, in the form of extremely sweetened and milky instant coffee, and later, extremely sweetened and milky Starbucks coffee. I loved the smell of coffee, which I associated with the cafe sections of bookstores like Barnes and Noble and Borders. My family and I would often spend afternoons reading books while my parents sipped on a coffee and I snacked on a cookie.
In college, coffee took on a larger role in my life, as sleeping before midnight became and impossibility, and impressive feats of procrastination required fuel to keep going. Where the coffee came from didn’t really matter, as I drank from the various campus coffee shops. Occasionally, I wandered off campus to a coffee shop and had a cappuccino here and there, mostly for the aesthetic of the latte art.
However, around the end of my freshman year, I visited my brother in San Francisco, where I saw him grind beans by hand and make a cup of coffee. With this great cup of mud, I realized that there was more to the drink than just the aesthetics and the caffeine. During my week with him, my brother took to me to various beautiful coffee shops, where I tried different coffees and pretended that I could tell the differences between them.
When I returned to Atlanta, I decided that I needed to actually leave campus more often, and that visiting various local coffee shops was the perfect excuse to do so. At the same time, I made new friends and they started congregating around different coffee shops. Coffee wasn’t just a beverage anymore, it was a chance to spend time with other people. One local coffee shop, Octane Coffee (RIP), became a go-to haunt, where I could go most days of the week and see someone I knew. Some of those friends went on to become baristas and our group’s collective knowledge of coffee grew deeper.
After those days passed, I’ve gone on and off of coffee and I’ve lost touch with those friends. My parents have come to appreciate third-wave coffee, even if my dad still puts far too much sugar in his. With each cup, I get a hit of caffeine, a beautiful aroma, a need to use the bathroom, and a little more.
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In between pours,
Nikhil