the pleasures of being a n00b

I’ve only lately discovered coffee after several years of tea snobbiness. (Coinneseurship, snobbiness, whatever.) My parents sent over some Costa Rican coffee in November, and I figured I’d try a cup just to see what was what. Then I started having a cup or two each Saturday, and that’s pretty much where it’s stood. Sometimes one in the middle of the week, but generally not. I’ve been drinking them pretty much the way The Husband takes his: iced, with steamed milk and sweetener.

I finally got to the end of the Costa Rican, which was good because it was getting stale stale stale. (Ground coffee, four months old? Quel horror!) I decided I wanted to buy different coffees in small amounts so I can try more kinds more quickly. My best friend recently went to Africa, and fell in love with Ethiopian coffee. She's asked me to keep an eye out for it in my city, since she can’t get it in my hometown. I’d been looking for the past month or so, but only found Kenyan, and that’s what I shipped to her last week.

So Mister Husband and I were out and about last night, and we stopped by White Rock Coffee. They had not one but two kinds of Ethiopian coffees: organic, free-trade yirgacheffe and regular harrar. I bought a quarter-pound of yirgacheffe beans and looked them up on the Internet after we got home. Apparently, my instincts are unerringly hoity-toity: yirgacheffe is hand-picked, wet-fermented, and then meticulously dried and roasted. I ground some this morning and brewed it up in a French press. I am surprised at how different it is from the Costa Rican I’ve been drinking. Thinner, and delicate. It doesn’t need milk or much sweetening; I added a scant spoon of raw sugar and left it at that. Amazing.

I suspect I am launched on a coffee odyssey.