the Tao of Coffee

Always thinking of how interconnected coffee is with the rest of the world. Always thinking of the other things that we take away from coffee. Lessons that are not just the knowledge of how to make coffee, but lessons on life. It only took me a minute to see the parallels between my coffee adventure and Tao.

What is Tao? Although you can find it interpreted a million different ways to suit a million different needs, 'Tao' is literally translated as 'way', 'path', or 'route.' To me, more specifically as the way we interact with our world, become apart of it and realize how much impact we have. What is the Tao of coffee? As coffee people know, coffee begins to consume your life. You eat, drink, walk, sneeze, sleep and dream about coffee. Coffee becomes your life. The Tao of coffee is how coffee people unknowingly strive to become one with the coffee through their five senses, our ability to perceive the universe.

There are several principles to Tao, and to be learned by living life. Recently I asked myself, "Are you content? Can a human be content?" Very scientifically the answer is no because of laws of motion. In a different context, the context of Tao, we find that being content is "the only measure by which we should gauge personal success and how to use it as a filter through which society's values should be passed." What does this mean? Unlike the raving views of political or religious organizations redefining their views to fit a moment, we find in the coffee world that coffee comes from all over the planet from thousands of different farms from hundreds of different countries. The coffee comes from millions of different people from all walks of life, economically, religiously, politically, nationally, or hereditarily. Coffee also comes from potentially millions and millions of different plants, hundreds of different varietals, and processed dozens of different ways. So how do we gauge our success in the coffee industry? I can say for the most part that it is not monetarily for the majority of people involved in the coffee industry. So what is meant by being content? Does what you do make you happy? Do you take pride in what you do? Does coffee fill you up (metaphorically as well as physically) inside? Society is you and me, we humans make up the soul of humanity and our ability to distill so much from so much gives us the ability to appreciate the momentary bliss when sipping on a cup of coffee. That is Tao.

The Tao of coffee is exemplified in the small acts that we do, such as pulling a shot. This though does not seem to carry the same weight as what we are actually a part of in a larger sense. The idea of holism is "the idea that all the properties of a given system cannot be determined or explained by its component parts alone. Instead, the system as a whole determines in an important way how the parts behave." Take for example that having a morning cup of coffee for the average Joe is just a wake up tool. This Joe ideally purchased it from an independent micro roaster in a one pound bag. I have read from in many places that a single coffee tree only produces one pound of (roasted) coffee a year. Although highly unlikely (except possible in micro-lot situation), we can look relatively at that pound of coffee used by the average Joe as a single coffee tree. From the moment the coffee cherry was picked as Edwin Martinez says "the quality of the coffee can never go up, it can only go down." So in the processing, exporting, importing and cross country shipping, all the way down to guys roasting, selling, and even the Baristas preparing drinks, the quality of the coffee is potentially dropping. It is the job of these folks involved in the coffee industry to maintain the quality so that the average Joe can experience the greatness of the coffee. Relatively though, with coffee as the second highest traded commodity in the world next to oil, that those small steps that we do to ensure quality act as very small part of the greater world wide economic force that is coffee.

The third wave as defined by the famous Nick Cho is about "(appreciating) each coffee for what it truly is and takes whatever necessary steps to highlight the amazing, unique character in every coffee." Which leads us to the manifestations of the Tao of Coffee. We find this in the uncorrupted manifestations of coffee or as we have come to call it, the third wave. It seems that instead of just dumping canned coffee into a coffee machine in order to make a pot of coffee, I spend most of my time preparing. Preparing for these few small moments of hopefully capturing the essence of coffee. I focus on method of coffee preparation (ie, chemex, french-press, espresso, kona, vac-pot), I focus on grind particle size, water temperature, freshness of coffee, weight, roast style, origin, season, ambient moisture... My goal is to get the coffee, what the coffee is at origin to be in my cup. To a not coffee person this all must sound like over-kill, but I assure you and them that it is not. When you have that first cup of honed in perfection it all makes sense. We want to ultimately achieve this form of what the Tao calls 'enlightened self-interest.' I do not mean selfishness, but an act of bringing yourself to the next level of experience with coffee.

The next level of coffee experience starts with your five senses, and sometimes six senses if you have synesthesia, and boy would I like to talk to you about coffee if you did. Lao Tzu the first person to identify and write of Tao wrote "The people of the world all have a purpose; I alone appear stubborn and uncouth. I alone differ from the other people, And value drawing sustenance from the Mother." We can look at this and take away something so simple as that we can see beauty where others only see nothing. Too deep? Well, us few coffee lovers spend our time looking at a million attributes of the bean itself from color, pitch, touch, first and sometimes second cracks, the fragrance and aromas, and most importantly taste, and the flavors we take away from the coffee. We use our five senses as the means to feel the essence of the coffee and momentarily become one with it. There have been books singularly written on one coffee, and its incredible attributes. The Tao of Coffee is about discovery of the beauty of coffee.

With the discussion of coffee often comes up the subject of environmental impact as well as humanities impact by way of coffee. There are several organizations dedicated to reducing the impact of unnatural farming practices around the world, and with coffee a little 'FTO' sticker comes to mind. The real dedication and change comes about when we use the worlds natural balancing force of the economy to emulate our ethics. What do I mean by this? Simply that when a person purchases something, they are in essence voting for it with their wallet. When somebody buys something that is low quality, there by the laws of supply and demand a gap to fill, and more low quality and cost goods will be produced. With the third wave and a re-evaluation and emphasis on quality, the third-wave has spearheaded a movement that parallels the environmental movement towards a better way of living. It should only seem logical that those who seek the raw natural beauty of coffee and life would also like to see coffee produced without chemicals or unnatural practices occur in the name of quality coffee. Lao Tzu said "He who knows where to stop may be exempt from danger." This means that when you are dedicated enough to something that you should see all aspects of it and its limitations. The third-wave/ quality/ environmental movement can see the end of the road for excess, waste, and low quality coffee and is putting forward a new future based on the Taoist principles of becoming a positive force for change.

This brings me to my final part of the Tao of coffee. Lao Tzu say "Only the perfect man can go about the world without attracting attention to himself." This is not to say do nothing and nothing will be done to you. This is to say that being a rock-star and glamor will only distract you from the real goals of discovery, and potentially lead you to a life of enclosure and loneliness. The real goal of the Tao of Coffee is a personal journey of quality not to impress and destroy. The Tao of Coffee for me is about doing my best with what I have and what is available to me. Accepting natural transitions around me in the world. Being able to accept the beauty of what I am working with and working to create more beauty. Knowing that I am a piece of a larger puzzle and that my minimal contribution could mean nothing, or potentially everything. The Tao of coffee is to say that Tao is coffee, or that coffee is Tao!

training & muscle memory

I only had three hours, but I did my best at training this group of relative newcomers to the coffee industry. I started it all out with saying how much coffee means to me and how passionate you can become about coffee. I tried to describe all the things I have talked about in my previous blog posts: technique, questions, reaching for something more than just a cup of joe... I hope they bought it.

Courtney and Brett have been prepping more and more for the upcoming Great Lakes Barista Championship. Its not a bad thing but they keep asking me questions, great questions, and talking to me about coffee, and posing questions without question marks. I have loved it. Watching these two prepare for battle has made me feel like I finally have something to offer the coffee industry and these two bright stars are going to shine I tell ya!

I had a long conversation with Tif and Miro on the way out to Chicago a couple weekends ago. It consisted of many subjects revolving around coffee. Before I realized, it was time to drive home by myself, we had been talking about nothing but coffee for nearly two hours if you count the pre-drive prep time. How is it that as children we could all grow up with dreams of being astronauts and cowboys and find ourselves as adults thrilled and empowered by the roasted pit of a cherry?

So training as it was, consisted of me, two dudes and two ladies. One dude said he liked the idea of coffee and the atmosphere in coffee shops, the other said he knew nothing about coffee, one of the ladies had previously worked at some form of "barista"(and I use that term loosely) job where she worked on a super-automatic machine and had no idea about technical coffee, and the last lady had a pretty good understanding of the amount of work needed for good coffee. So, what do I do? My first goal is to get very technical so they understand the importance of coffee and that they are going to be, whether or not they wanted to be, involved in something that wasn't just another job at a chain retail coffee shop. I gave them the run over of all the good and bad things to do or not do with espresso and milk. I spent about 2 hours on very technical espresso (more than I learned in the first year or two in the industry) and about an hour on milk steaming. In the end I looked at them and they all seemed to have this "oh man, I need to practice" look on their faces. It made me happy to the point that I smiled about the whole way home.

What I realize now, is that the majority of what I was trying to teach or impart on these few people is that developing muscle memory with your technique can control some of the most important factors in preparing and serving good espresso. As baristas know, how you make espresso has a huge impact on the final results in the cup... emphasized HUGE! I am very confident even today that although I am not often on an espresso machine that I could (with my muscle memory learned technique) pull some great espresso, so to say I dont think I would be ashamed to serve it... if you get what I mean?

Watching Courtney and Brett is a lot of fun. I can see their muscle memory in action, tapping tamping, dosing, cleaning, cleaning, cleaning and boy it is entertaining. We are trying to get coffees for blends down and trying different roast profiles and combos.

So, what about me? I am currently studying about the history of the industry, and the actual coffee plant. I think its good to have goals. So, I think my current goal is to ultimately source coffee and potentially work on a farm... possibly maybe a speck of hope to have a farm... oh, the dreams...