Coffee making and drinking is an act of LOVE.
I Love Coffee
Some may say …OK that’s a matter of taste. I am convinced it goes a whole lot further.
Coffee drinkers ‘Love’ a good cup. Ask any Coffee drinker if he/she like a cup of Coffee and the reply will mostly be “I’d Love one !!” – Ask a tea drinker and and the reply in general will be ” Yes I’d like a cup of tea please” . Can you see the smile of the Coffee drinker and the wrinkles in the lips of the tea drinker already ?
So Coffee has a relation with Love that sort of emerges here right ?
To prove that fact we have to look how we produce our Coffee … and tea. Coffee beans have to be picked by hand , only the ripe ones , the ones that just not fall of the tree are taken and the others have to wait ’till the next round of picking. This means that loving hands have to go around and select the good ones. To be sure the hands of your coffee are really loving make sure you drink Fair Trade Coffee , ( Look at the label ) . Then the coffee beans are spread out to dry in the glorious sun. Once dried the beans are ready to be roasted. The roasting process again involves a lot of love and care , it needs a trained eye to get to the perfect roast, to hot and they burn , to cold and they are not roasted. Then the beans are ready for your coffee. Best is to grind them just before brewing the golden brown liquid. Grinding needs to be at the right size for the specific method of making the coffee, not a random process but love care is needed to select the perfect grind. There are many methods of brewing a perfect cup of coffee: The best coffee brewers are called Baristas. A Barista will tell you : Never pour boiling water on coffee but after boiling let it cool down to 95 degrees C . Pour it on fast and make sure the coffee grit is then immediately separated from the brewed coffee. That will ensure that the evidence of a good cup of Coffee … the crema is on top of the glorious brew. These are the very basics of making a good cup of Coffee. No need to say this needs a huge deal of Love.
Without hesitation I can say I always put a great deal of Love in the coffee I make !!
Now look at tea: beautiful green tea bushes are all of a sudden systematically robbed of their freshest virgin leaves, just when those beautiful young virgin leaves see the sun and have hopes of a fantastic green life … sjakka , cut off by wrinkled hands. There can be no love in such a cruel act. Next the lovely young virgin leaves , so cruel separated from their mother bush, are hung out in large sheds , not even in the glorious sun , no a dry windy shed… imagine… Then after some time , days , weeks being transformed to wrinkled shrunken brown branches with all the young virgin leaves dead the tea leaves are collected and crushed to a small size. Ready to be put in boiling water for the infusion process. Think of it … infusion process … no human care of love is needed. Infusion process …. sounds kind of medical to me. Have a look at making tea with tea bags … there one is in for the real shocker: one has to pull a string to infuse the tea… pulling strings to create a drink ?? No love what so ever can be involved in tea . FULL STOP!
For scientific completion of this white paper : Look at Coffee drinkers: always cheerful with a big smile on their face , it starts with the Barista , always a broad smiling human with pride in the making of your his / her cup of Coffee.
Now look at tea drinkers , ever seen them smile when they make the tea , ever seen them smile when they drink the infusion ? I haven’t , all I could see is their wrinkled lips carefully touching that boiling hot cup with the juices of those dead virgin leaves.