read write run

I have never loved coffee.

I have never even really liked coffee, though I did go through a phase of drinking cup after cup of thin, bitter instant coffee during my working day. No sooner was my cup empty than I would get up and head for the kitchen and boil the jug for another cup. No milk. No sugar, just the thin, awful coffee. I did it because I thought it was a cool and clever thing to do.

These days I’ll often have a cup of tea beside me, and at night Beloved and I will often make each other a cup of milk coffee (half a teaspoon of instant is all I care for) put it in the mug and, well, this is why we really have microwaves, isn’t it? If someone offers me a hot drink at their place I seldom risk tea because I’m so fussy about it. Instead I will ask for coffee ‘weak, white and one’. Usually I don’t drink it because it will still be too strong and bitter for my liking.

Nevertheless coffee has always been a part of my life.

My family lived as an extended unit, in Nana’s house, until I was 10. Nana had an old gas Kooka stove, something like the one these ladies are using in the picture. It was green. I only ever remember Nana and Mum making cups of tea. Our kettle was different from the one the lady in the picture is holding. Ours didn’t whistle, it had a long, curved spout and sang and hissed and sputtered when its water boiled, threatening to put out the little gas flame and kill us all.

When we moved, Mum and Dad got an electric jug. I don’t know anything about its history, but it was a great, heavy ceramic monster that didn’t whistle or turn itself off when its water boiled, just sputtered and burped boiling water all over the bench, threatening to scald and then electrocute whoever was making the tea.

They also got a percolator. It wasn’t electric, but sat on the stovetop and bubbled away over breakfast, making their mornings all bitter and speedy. Percolators also make me think of a really stupid old TV commercial from the 70s. I cannot begin to imagine what possessed Dame Zara Bate to do one of those chatty “to the camera” ads where she insisted that whatever brand of instant coffee she was flogging was as good as percolated (a highly subjective call, since I prefer instant, but let’s not push it). She said she would put the instant into her percolator and then sat there giggling and saying ‘perk, perk, perk’ – honestly, this lady had been married to a prime minister. Did she really need to resort to instant coffee? – and then all her friends would be so impressed because she was making “real” percolated coffee. All I can think is that the mysterious disappearance of her husband, Harold Holt, who was Prime Minister at the time, had all been too much for her, and it had sent her just a little bit dotty. (I am assuming this, also, on account of surely it was she who gave permission for a swimming pool to be named in his memory. All very well, the man did love to swim, but a tad ironic, considering he disappeared while on a swim.)

So, Mum and Dad and coffee in the morning. I would sometimes help by grinding the beans for Mum with one of those little hand-wound mills a bit like the one in the picture. Later, though, they started having mills in the supermarket. You would choose your blend, choose how fine you wanted it ground, empty the beans in, place the bag under the grinder, and Bob was the proverbial parental sibling. I tried to like coffee, I really did. I tried it black and except for that time when I was working, well, I really didn’t like it. In milk, okay, but I have it so weak, it’s only the milk I can taste. I just eat the foam off the top of cappuccinos, and I just stir lattes and play with the sugar packets.

Beloved, on the other hand, is a bit of a coffee desperate. His life, like Kathryn Janeway’s, is a quest for the great coffee. He admits that when he was studying, he used to chain-drink coffee. Unlike me, he probably did this because he actually liked it.

He had a percolator, much like Mum and Dad’s but said it made the coffee a bit bitter (a bit???) so he got himself one of those little aluminium octagonal pots that you always see in the Italian delis. It became his constant companion, so much so that he got a second pot to take when we went camping, and later I got him a tiny pot so that he could take it when he went on trips on the bike, and even for bushwalking.

I got one of those dripolator/filter things from a second hand shop. You put the coffee into the disposable filter paper and the water into the reservior. Plug it in and turn it on. As the water heats up, it drips through the coffee and into the jug. Very handy thing to have at parties, because it basically looks after itself, just has to be freshened up when all the coffee’s gone. Beloved was never a big fan of this. I think it just didn’t make the coffee strong enough for his liking. He also has a number of mini-versions of the dripolator. Little things with grids on the bottom. You put the coffee in, sit it on top of your cup, pour in the water and wait for gravity to work its magic. Oh, and the plungers, too. Big ones and little ones. Again, they fill our cupboards, but seldom get used.

When Beloved first became obsessive about hsi coffee, he bought this. I’m not sure what its real name is, we’ve always called it the coffee siphon (although “George” would have been a good name, too). You put hot water in the bottom jug and coffee in the top jug. You can see that it’s sitting on an odd metal plate, but that’s because our stove is convection and convection doesn’t work on glass, the plate heats up the water though.

The water goes up the pipe and bubbles into the coffee. When it’s all gone up, you turn off the heat, and it sucks back down again into the bottom jug, so it gets filtered through the coffee twice. It’s much gentler than regular percolation, and I can almost drink this coffee (almost).

Of course it’s all about the beans and Beloved has found this nice little place in Balaklava that does its own roasting. They send the beans nice and quick (and a nice mango sencha for me). Many’s the morning we’ve had the parcel man at the front door just in time for breakfast.

Beloved would love to have one of those magnificent Gaggia machines that cost thousands of dollars and take up half the kitchen, steaming and hissing and roaring like a steam engine. We’ve had a couple of espresso machines, but both have died. One died just in time for Beloved to need to buy another one for the new kitchen. He did his research and got a machine that he was very happy with. It was loud, though. Such a noise first thing in the morning, the hiss and scream of it. It died a few months ago. He still hasn’t been able to replace the part that carked it.

So what did I get him for Christmas?

A new coffee machine, of course. This is an elegant thing. I bought it from a wonderful coffee shop in the Queen Victoria Market. I thought it was called a French Press, but apparently that’s just another name for the things we call plungers. No, this one is pure USA. Clever people those Americans.

You put the coffee into the grip, just like with a normal espresso machine, and you put hot water into the clear bit on top. You raise the two wing-like handles and leave it for a few seconds to soak into the coffee. Then you press the handles down, which forces the water through the coffee. Basically, it’s a manual espresso machine.

I love the elegant lines of it and the serenity of its silence. The only noise in the morning now is the scream of the grinder (or, as we like to call it, “the Poss Signal” since if she is within hearing range of the coffee grinder, Poss will appear like magic, cup in hand, and insist on being given the first coffee.)

It was a good gift, though.

Poss, like her dad, is a coffee drinker. Radio Boy is more like me. Not that interested in coffee, but will drink tea or herbal tea.

So that’s our morning. The scream of the beans grinding, our kettle, which doesn’t sing or whistle or sputter and has 5 different settings, depending on how hot you want your water, and beeps politely when it’s ready.

There’s so much quiet now.

BF’s parents bought him an espresso machine for his birthday last year. I suppose it’s just as well. He and Poss will be making their own coffee soon, as he has bought a house for them.

Life goes on. Another generation of coffee.

I think I’ll go make myself a cup of tea.