Pursuing the Perfect Cup of Coffee

Figure 1I did something heinous. After receiving a cup of Dunkin' Donuts Coffea arabica that had clearly exceeded the 15-minute half-life from coffee to sludge, and after abandoning Starbucks where the maker of my venti-no-fat-no-whip-mocha-valencia forgot the shot, I went home and mixed beans from both sources, grinding into intimate contact the helpless slivers of endosperm, mindlessly obliterating the embryos within. I don't know the farmers who grew the brew, whether it was fruity or bold, o

Ricki Lewis

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I did something heinous. After receiving a cup of Dunkin' Donuts Coffea arabica that had clearly exceeded the 15-minute half-life from coffee to sludge, and after abandoning Starbucks where the maker of my venti-no-fat-no-whip-mocha-valencia forgot the shot, I went home and mixed beans from both sources, grinding into intimate contact the helpless slivers of endosperm, mindlessly obliterating the embryos within. I don't know the farmers who grew the brew, whether it was fruity or bold, or if it hailed from Sumatra or the eastern highlands of Papua New Guinea. It just tasted good.

The sheer complexity of caffeine addiction nowadays drove me to my drastic act of mixed beanery. A little research revealed that coffee preparation is a highly refined science, involving ecology, botany, chemistry, and biotechnology, not to mention economics, politics, and linguistics, as well as history.

Coffee cultivation began in Ethiopia before the 14th century, then spread to ...

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