The Blue Bottle Craft of Coffee

denser, high-elevation coffees, say from Ethiopia, often taste better when roasted with a higher drop temperature.

Classic Kierkegaard, straight out of The Concept of Anxiety:

before the Internet was ubiquitous and methodically took the joy out of personal discoveries like these, so I felt like an explorer.

the whoosh of coffee aroma coming from the can was the best moment that the coffee had

Interestingly, it is illegal to import non-Brazilian coffee into Brazil, so the range of coffees the increasingly affluent internal market can enjoy is limited by law

I like how tangible everything is in coffee. With the clarinet you practice, practice, practice and rehearse, rehearse, rehearse. When you perform, you’re training essentially invisible muscles to manufacture a vibrating column of air. Coffee is tangible. I am actually able to change the brain chemistry of my customers. Making an espresso is a performance that lasts ninety seconds and then you’re done. You go on to the next performance. You may get applause or you may get boos, and then you move on.

The higher the coffee is grown, the more slowly it develops and the denser the beans become, which can create more interesting flavors. Much like wine grapes grown under “stressful” conditions in great growing regions, the challenge of altitude forces coffee plants to focus their energy on developing seeds, rather than more extensive vegetative growth, which would be the plant’s inclination under less stressful circumstances.