This morning he stopped, mid-spoonful and asked me how many sugars I would like in my coffee.
It’s funny how we all build our little (or big) cup of java, mocha, caffeine – or Kaffein, no two the same. A little coffee bean, ground, sometimes shaken, often stirred, sometimes with a little Irish shaken and stirred, and even after all of that, no two people enjoy theirs just the same.
Like a finger-print a cross-hatching mess of earth-toned colours and lines in a rounded mess, held together in a rounded form. No two the same. Kopi Luwak, or “civet coffee” will set you back almost R3000 for a kilogram of digested coffee beans, or R80 a cup for the most exclusive cup of (mind my language) crap in Cape Town. Haas Coffee, in Bo Kaap (which does unspeakably beautiful things with fig jam and pastries) offers you this experience, which is essentially a coffee berry that has been digested by, and passed through the digestive tract of an Asian Palm Civet (and other civets related to it), and then harvested by villagers and farmers in Sumatra, Bali, Java, Indonesia and the Philippines and then shipped to the most expensive coffee bearing shelves and palates in the world.
And just as the drinkers of Kopi Luwak like to bury themselves in the characteristic bitterness of a fine cup of coffee, with just the right amount of sweetness for their tongues, so too do coffee drinkers everywhere seek the elusive taste of something special on their taste buds. One of my favourite tweeters, @tiishetso likes her coffee strong, black and sweet, just, as the old joke goes, like she likes her men. Away from the comfort of home, however, she orders her cappuccino with froth and three white sugars.
A while ago, around the time when I was blessed to be asked to write this article, I enjoyed something called a ”Dulce De Luche” at Life, at Hyde Park Mall in Johannesburg. From the minute I ordered that cup of beauty until this very second, my mind has been buried in the intricacies of how we create a Latte, or Red Cappuccino, each layer perfectly poured into the cup of its drinker, until joy is found in that very last drop of milk. Literally translated, Dulce de Luche in Spanish means “Sweet of Milk” and what a sweet milk it was. Traditionally, the sweet milk is caramelised milk or condensed milk, but, my cup at Life was so much more beautiful. Layers of cream and caramel with a little biscotti on the saucer to make me feel better about spending so much on a cup of milk (I suppose), and then a little jug of hot milk that I physically poured into this beautiful mess and sipped before it ran too cold. It was unlike anything I have ever tasted, but the way it was built, constructed around joy and sweetness was incredibly sweet.
My heart rang with joy when I thought of this new online magazine, Kaffein, as I enjoyed the cup of sweetness. Layers of everything different – no two the same, in this big, messy cup, each to a different taste, brought together to bring you the perfect mess of bitterness or sweetness, so that each connoisseur gets their fix, just as they like it, until they’re satisfied with their fix of caffeine.
Perhaps I’m a coffee snob. Perhaps I’ve ingested far too much Kosher-blessed Jacobs (with a block of Lindt) to want anything but the perfect cup of coffee. Or perhaps, I just know that no two people like their coffee their same. A friend of mine, @papillon_ZA tweeted, that on some days she likes to spoil herself with cream whereas, another friend, and former radio co-host Khangelani, is satisfied with a warm cup of sugar water in winter, there was nothing similar about their cup of something warm.
So this morning when he asked how many sugars I would like in my coffee and I replied one and a half, I barely blinked. Because one and a half sugars is the perfect balance for my palate, unlike tiishetso’s three sugars: not too sweet, not too bitter, as Goldilocks proclaimed, just right, as long as there’s Kaffein in the broth. Isn’t that how we all like our coffee?
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