Review: Coffee Talk by Morton Satin

Cof­fee Talk: The Stim­u­lat­ing Story of the World’s Most Pop­u­lar Brew

(Ama­zon, Goodreads)

by Mor­ton Satin

(Ama­zon, Goodreads)

Pub­lished by Prometheus Books Novem­ber 2010

What is it about cof­fee that makes it so pop­u­lar across so many dif­fer­ent cul­tures? Can it be the caf­feine or is there some­thing else about cof­fee that makes it so alluring?

No bev­er­age has broader world­wide appeal. In North Amer­ica and Europe, the annual amount of cof­fee con­sumed is over­whelm­ing. And in China and even in India, the tra­di­tional strong­hold of tea drink­ing, the cof­fee busi­ness has grown by leaps and bounds.

In this enter­tain­ing yet com­pre­hen­sive book, food expert Mor­ton Satin describes how, in recent times, cof­fee has become the mag­net that draws peo­ple together for spir­ited inter­changes of infor­ma­tion and ideas. In the intel­lec­tual cap­i­tals of the world, cof­fee­houses have been and con­tinue to be the venues where the great minds flock to dis­cuss the lat­est devel­op­ments in the arts, sci­ences, and social philosophies.

Satin, more­over, traces the rich and intrigu­ing his­tory of cof­fee, show­ing how cof­fee con­sump­tion evolved to fit the social and eco­nomic needs of dif­fer­ent times. His fas­ci­nat­ing nar­ra­tive dis­pels com­mon myths and con­veys such little-​​known facts as: the dark cof­fee bean orig­i­nated in Africa, not South Amer­ica, as many believe.

Today, of course, it is the indis­pens­able wake-​​up bev­er­age in most house­holds through­out the West and the East. It is also the main­stay of the Star­bucks phenomenon—a chain of cof­fee­houses whose pop­u­lar­ity con­tin­ues to soar. Satin even goes on to reveal the best tech­niques for home brew­ing. And he enlivens his nar­ra­tive with sto­ries of the fine art of the barista, which includes the World Barista Cham­pi­onship where rival bar­men from around the globe dis­play the high­est artistry of cof­fee brewing.

Lav­ishly illus­trated, this delight­ful and infor­ma­tive book is the per­fect com­ple­ment for your next cof­fee break.

 

I had intended to write this piece last week while sit­ting in my favorite Austin cof­fee shop, Epoch, but they were hav­ing net­work issues and so it just didn’t hap­pen as planned.  But it would have been awe­some to have a pip­ing hot rasp­berry mocha to sip while writ­ing a review all about coffee.

This book falls into the non-​​fiction that I love to read.  I love read­ing the his­tory of things, how they came to be a part of life today, where the small things related to them orig­i­nally sprung up, some things I’ve read about have been banned and so I learned why and any myr­iad of other tid­bits about an item.

Cof­fee, holds a very dear place in my heart.  But it has to be really good cof­fee.  The best I’d ever had was in col­lege a neigh­bor in the next room over would invite me over for his spe­cialty while we played chess or cards.  (I think I miss his cof­fee as much as I miss play­ing chess and cards on a reg­u­lar basis.)  He would slowly warm the milk up to just below boil­ing, hand grind the cof­fee beans (I wish I could remem­ber what they were specif­i­cally) then mea­sure out the grounds into his french press, add the milk, set his timer and then press it when fin­ished.  Amaz­ing!  I’ve tried to repli­cate it, but haven’t been suc­cess­ful.  Appar­ently his atten­tion to detail and the painstak­ing time he spent per­fect­ing his tech­nique was well worth it, almost a trade secret.

Learn­ing about the rise of cof­fee, how it made its way into the heart of the Amer­i­can cul­ture, and its spread around the world was quite enjoy­able.  I learned about the rise of cof­fee shops and how sev­eral rulers tried to con­trol their pub­lic by ban­ning cof­fee, thank­fully with­out much suc­cess.  Satin even tells how cof­fee is raised, har­vested, and read­ied for roast­ing.  I learned some things I didn’t know, but hav­ing been a cof­fee fan for a num­ber of years now, there was a lot of the infor­ma­tion such as the dif­fer­ence between a bean that is sun-​​dried with its skin ver­sus those that are dried with the skin on dur­ing the process, and of course thanks to mod­ern movies, I even knew about the super-​​expensive, super-​​elite cof­fee that comes from the drop­pings of a wild cat.  If you haven’t seen The Bucket List I sug­gest you at least watch the bit about the cof­fee.  It’s very entertaining.

All in all I found this book to be a good read.  I did find it to lose some of its cohe­sion towards the last half as Satin seemed to jump around a bit from quotes about cof­fee to how to make cof­fee, and then going back to some of the his­tory of it.  How­ever, it did not dis­tract enough from the whole to make me not sug­gest this book.

There is another book on my wish­list that also cov­ers the his­tory of cof­fee, and it will be inter­est­ing to com­pare the two when I finally get around to get­ting a copy of the other.  Per­haps my next non-​​fiction should be about sugar, or some­thing that is some­how linked to cof­fee.  We shall see.