Embrace Ephemera

I think a lot about coffee. Maybe too much. But after years in the coffee industry, and more years afterward having coffee as a hobby and source of personal pleasure, it's hard not to. Anyone who's been lured into this magical brown bean juice knows that it's hard to wax too poetic about the delights that it offers. You may say I'm just being pretentious. And you're probably right.

The perfect cup

One of my favorite coffees I've ever had was around 2014, when I was still working in the family coffee shop. That's when I was introduced to the Monsooned Malabar. So, let's back up and get a little background. Coffee grows on a shrub, and the beans that we roast and grind and brew are actually the seeds of the fruit of that shrub. Before they can be roasted, the fruit has to be picked off and the beans have to be dried to the proper moisture content. In certain parts of the world, they do this by first pulping off the coffee cherry, then letting the beans cure outside in huge beds in the monsoon winds and rains.

The first time I tried it, I was hooked. It had a rich, earthy flavor - the part of coffee that really tastes like coffee, if you know what I mean. The aroma, texture, and taste were all captivating. We bought a large batch of it for the shop, and I drank it greedily, while extolling its virtues to our staff, customers, milk delivery driver - anyone who would listen, really.

The plot twist

Imagine my disappointment when, the next time I saw a Monsooned Malabar in a shop and got a cup, it tasted nothing like the brew I fell in love with. "Not unusual," I thought. It could have been roasted differently, or brewed differently, and it was out of season anyway. I chalked it up to a bad cup.

But it just kept happening. I had the brew at several places over the course of a few months, and none of them connected with me the same way. The next year, we even got the fresh batch of Malabar from the same coffee supplier, and guess what? It just wasn't the same.

Learning to embrace the now

Since that first batch of incredible coffee over a decade ago, I've never found another batch quite like it. In fact, it turns out that I generally don't like Monsooned Malabar coffee at all. There was just something about that first batch that resonated perfectly with my taste buds. As you might have guessed, giant, seasonal storms are not great sources of control. They're unpredictable and capricious, and no two are the same. So it's not hard to reason that any two batches of coffee made in different monsoon seasons will potentially be wildly different. But it's not just the monsoon - any coffee from any farm is going to taste different from season to season. Heck, the same coffee can have completely different properties just a few feet over on the same farm. What are we supposed to do about that? How will I ever get my perfect, beloved cup of coffee back?

I've learned to embrace it. Live in this moment. Not the last, not the next, this one right now. Even though I've never gotten that exact coffee back, I've tasted many wonderful brews over the years, each with their own unique personality. Think of all of those new perspectives! Think of how much more I've gotten to experience, knowing that the same thing never happens exactly the same way more than once. So be thankful for what you experienced yesterday. Look forward to what you will experience tomorrow. But most of all, jump into today with both feet, sinking down over your head in what it has to offer you. Every day is its own unique adventure. You can't predict it, you can't control it, you might as well just enoy the ride.