Seed2Cups is the chronicle of one little barista’s baby steps into the wide world of coffee.
Let me introduce myself, your bariste blogger, as Danae. I’ve been involved with various aspects of the barista community for the past six years. That includes working for giant coffee corporations and tiny family-run shops. Yet within only the last six months, I’ve begun counting myself as a born-again bean brewer, and it has nothing to do with my religious alignment.
What’s the difference between liking coffee, and loving it?
I’ve liked coffee since I was sixteen. I used to drink the cheapest lukewarm brown water that dingy senior citizens restaurants had the brazen balls to call coffee. It tasted more like the re-used filter it’d been brewed in than the bean-chaff that had been percolated, but everyone ordered it regardless. I used to make the self-professed “best” American coffee, and took the over-roasted, pre-ground cup of mass-marketed yuppie propaganda for what it claimed it was worth. And when I visited my first high-quality, small-batch roaster, it was as if I had never really tasted coffee before. That unpretentious, pure cup of complicated black woke me the hell up. I think I fell in love. I say “think”, in the same way you can call something love only because it’s a kind of passionately devoted awe you have no other name for.
Coffee begins like a tiny miracle. From the lush green grows a humble seed of endless possibility, a red cherry ripe with untouched hope. When stripped of the flashy, fleshy packaging, when washed, when the best and brightest aspects have been selected, have been left to ruminate, have been thrown into the crucible, when the finished product is released at the height of its development – even that’s just a start. With these beans of highest virtue, we perform ritual, we give heart, we grind and brew and judge the remains for everything they are.
Of course, these things taste the best when shared.
And that’s when I thirsted for more.
I decided after much over-extracted thought on the name “Seed2Cups”, for a handful of reasons.
I’ll tell you right from the start that I certainly didn’t coin the phrase “seed-to-cup”, and I’m still investigating where it might’ve begun. (If any of you readers has a lead, please let me know!) The words are familiar in the coffee industry, illuminating the concept of following coffee production from its very origins through to the final beverage reaching the consumer. It’s become a slogan for transparency, for accountability, for responsibility, sustainability – and other “-ilities” besides, generally making a statement about dedication to the highest quality for all aspects of that coffee’s development.
So what’s with that numeric up in there? Has internet-slang “1337 speak” already made me incapable of writing two letters? Not quite yet… Aside from “to” as referenced above, “2″ further signifies the sharing component that I see as being essential to coffee. It also explains why “cups” is plural, not singular.
It takes a long chain of dedicated workers from vastly varied disciplines to make a typical cup o’ joe (jane?) happen. The act of drinking coffee, much like eating, has become a very significant social feature. If I have a cup, and you have a cup, it gives us something to discuss, something to bond over, a shared experience, doesn’t it? And for a more whimsical reason from a source I don’t put much weight upon, the two of cups has meaning within a tarot deck that echoes the sense of connection that I’m trying to get across.
To conclude this long-winded hello, I’ll tell you that this is only the seed, not the cupped result. I learn more every day I’m behind the bar, and with that learning, recognize how ignorant I was before it. I’m going to make mistakes, I’m going to be wrong, I’m going to burn myself and have to start again. But out of that blood, sweat, and grounds, I expect to pull some black gold. I invite you to read along as I post everything from laughable pictures to deep-digging technical research, tiny tidbits to run-away trains of thought, silly finds to intensely engaging reports, big-name events to no-name occurrences. I don’t know where my new found passion will take me, but I know that I’ve just begun to brew. And I’ve got a spare cup.
(Please excuse the grinds as I move into this blog; more to come as I familiarize myself with WordPress.)
