As a child, this question was used to simply reference cream and sugar ratio. Needless to say, the meaning behind this question, as we read it today, has greatly changed shape and form. Growing up in New England in the 90’s, this question echoed endlessly from Dunkin Donuts cashiers and old ladies with their cigarettes at dinner tables alike. Drip-style was simply ‘cawfee’. Plain and simple. One 12-ounce cup or mug, one heaping spoonful of cream or sugar, or black, created the formula for how you took ‘your coffee’.
Today, asking someone how they take their coffee opens a floodgate of options. Forget milk and sweetener, but also method. Pour over? Espresso? Mushroom infused? French Press? Turkish? Instant? Pod? Shaken or blended? The critical question I asked for years as a barista: hot or iced? The options are endless. And I think that’s a beautiful thing.
Funny enough, how we perceive “coffee” comes down to not only where we are in the world and how we grew up, but in essence, our own relationship with it. Everything from time of day, to its’ place in family and cultural traditions, these heated bean grinds have been sewn our lives in countless ways.
One of the outlying questions of ‘how’ we take coffee starts with the fascination of what the ‘standard’ is where we are presently. In most of America, at least if you ask anyone over fifty, the general answer is “plain old coffee” out of a drip brew. Hot water streams into a basket filter into a glass pot. Diner style, as we may now call it. As far as we can deduce, the late 1880s creation of stove-top percolators was the initial method of use by most Americans. As we entered the 20th century, things evolved to save time and to avoid misuse. Stovetops transitioned to electric plugs. Basket filters allowed for one-time straining to eliminate bitterness, and so on. Generation after generation, the cup full of a nicely proportioned water to grind ratio gave us American coffee. Only in the 80s and 90s, when speciality coffee shops began popping up, did ‘fancy’ drinks start to enter the mainstream. Lattes, cappuccinos, macchiatos, you name it. This was also when the ever-debated iced coffee was born. As Y2K loomed, so did the eventual explosion of coffee options we have today. As any millennial can tell you, Starbucks was crucial to this shift in American coffee culture. Waking up to your beverage at home, or sipped on the go from a branded, lidded cup, was never the same again.
In other nations and cultures, however, coffee (cafe, caffe, kaffe, kopi, etc.) began differently and remains in a different relation to its drinker. Perhaps most famously, the invention of espresso–using steam and pressure over a puck of fine grinds, was invented in Turin, Italy in 1884. Whether by moka pot or a speciality machine, Italian culture revolves heavily around the social gathering of having caffe, in an espresso cup, in good company, multiple times daily. It is something to be drunk in a few sips, fairly quickly, while socializing.
Unsurprisingly, the highly appreciated Turkish/Greek method of coffee came from royalty in the Ottoman empire. This super frothy, rich cup of coffee is created with the grounds actually being cooked with the water in a special pot called an ibrik, made of copper, fully extracting all flavors of the bean grounds. Traditionally, the leftover grounds were also used in fortune telling, making the intake of Turkish coffee even more of a ritual than just a beverage. Coffee shops in Istanbul date as far back as 1554, where they were doubly used as social houses–long before the modern coffee house era of kitchy Jazz and busy laptops. Today, the beverage continues to be enjoyed with a deeply rooted reverence for its rich heritage and ceremonial nature.
Anyone who has enjoyed a Caffe de Olla can rave about the warm and flavorful impression this Mexican drink leaves on the consumer. Made traditionally with coffee, cinnamon, cane sugar (“piloncillo”), cloves and milk, the Caffe de Olla was brewed in clay pots. The beverage was made to energize and nourish soldiers during the strenuous Mexican Revolution. Its creation is rooted in the very creativity of Adelitas (incredible women soldiers who provided crucial organization and care) in the historic years of the early 20th century. Though enjoyed year round, this drink also holds sentimental value and is often made in batches for large family gatherings during holidays, most notably Christmas.
By contrast, in modern day Ireland (where I am physically writing this from), coffee in any form, is still relatively new to the culture. Much like their British and Scottish neighbors, tea has reigned here as the hot beverage of choice for centuries. Today, however, while new modern-style coffee shops continue to emerge every year, instant coffee owns the majority of shelf space at most grocery stores and Irish kitchen cabinets. While some locals say that this is due to cost and convenience, others share this is because coffee culture, as we define it, is still relatively young in a nation that is only about a century into its independence.
While the ways we ‘make’ coffee is endless, its place at a dining table is universally also diverse. Served with breakfast since the 1700s, the cup-o-joe has long been a pick-me-up for those of us about to start a long day of work or school. Additionally, many cultures serve coffee after dinner, encouraging digestion and accompanying the rich flavors of dessert. And for the real adults in the room, this is where many spiked ‘dessert coffees’ began (I’m looking at you carajillo, caffe corretto and irish coffee).
As many of us can attest, we were told as children that this beverage was only for adults (understandably, with the caffeine content). Coffee has long become a right of passage in countless cultures, when we are first given permission–often by grandparents, to savor our initial cup. To be “like the grown-ups”, even when we masked its bitterness with heaping spoonfuls of sugar, and enough cream to turn the contents into a paint color.
In any direction of the planet, the liquid volume, timing, frequency, and etiquette of coffee consumption makes for different customs; all of them equally peculiar and beautiful. So whether you prefer a good old cup from the local diner, a quick espresso on the go, a french press to share with friends over pastry, a cold brew with almond milk for today’s roadtrip, that 3pm keurig pod in the office, or simply a ceremonial Christmas cup with family…So, how do you take your coffee?
P.S. Frappuccinos aren’t coffee.
;)
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