I’m a newbie, remember?
And this is an adventure.
So of course it’s going to happen. I’m going to be quite capable of ruining a perfectly good cup of Blue Bottle coffee, in one fell swoop.
Okay, maybe not one.
It could have been the water.
(As with tea, I’ve heard the water matters for a good cup of coffee.)
It could have been the cream.
Sometimes cream misbehaves.
True. Cream is more likely to misbehave in the presence of certain compounds. Of which I have no way of knowing whether said compounds were present in the water I used to brew my pour-over cup of Blue Bottle coffee.
Perhaps the very word “blue” should have warned me away from the water I used.
Mine was ruby.
Ruby?!
Yes, ruby.
My older girl had brought back some raspberry tea from the local coffee shop, because the steep didn’t quite suit her, but she didn’t want to waste it, and she thought I might like it. I had tasted the tea and concluded it indeed tasted like raspberry, but it didn’t much interest me in its present state.
Brainstorm!
I have been looking for a way to raspberry-flavor my coffee. This could be the ticket!
So the thinking went.
And into the fridge went the raspberry tea, thus waiting patiently in a brushed-metal thermos, for the big day.
Sunday morning arrived. The sun was shining. What a beautiful day!
I heated the raspberry tea to pour-over perfection, ran it through the grounds, and added my lovely cream. Now, to just enjoy…
Egads!!!
My cream turned unlovely in an instant.
My Blue Bottle coffee was…
ah…
how shall we say it?
Not so appetizing.
Not perfection.
Not even sub-perfection.
Or, to be totally truthful… not even sub-sub-perfection.
Out came the fine-mesh strainer, hastily placed atop a big white mug.
In went the ruined coffee.
Over went the liquid onto the counter.
This was getting completely out of hand.
I considered tossing the whole operation and beginning again. But, like my daughter, I’m not big on wasting.
Not that I am BIG on a ruined cup of coffee, either. So I strained it three times. Reheated the coffee. And sat in the shadows so I couldn’t quite see the look of my coffee.
It actually tasted… not bad. Not fabulous, mind you. Not terrific. Not prize-winning. But, it tasted like… coffee. With a hint of raspberry.
And hadn’t that been the whole point?
Well, almost.
Let’s not discuss the finer point of what the “whole experience” of coffee should be!
Later, I could not help myself. My rule is just one cup of coffee, just one day a week, sometime before noon. But I had to know. What was to blame? My brainstorm? The cream? The collision of coffee and tea?
First, I tasted some of the creamless raspberry coffee that I’d left for my older daughter (who is mildly on this journey with me). It tasted… like coffee. Still not fabulous, mind you. Still not terrific. Still not prize-winning. But it had promise. And I am not deterred in the matter: I will find a way to flavor my coffee raspberry, and I might do more with pairings of coffee and tea. (Not for you. Because I suspect you have your standards! But for me, a newbie, who is on an adventure where the only rules are one cup, one day a week, sometime before noon.)
Anyway, after tasting the creamless raspberry coffee, I now had to test the cream. Was it past its prime? Or did it simply find the whole coffee-tea concoction too acidic for its taste, and so it separated, pronto, and left me straining to salvage this cup of coffee I’d waited all week to enjoy?
I heated some pure water with cream and did a second pour over using the same grounds. They were good grounds. They were giving grounds. They gifted me a perfect cup of coffee with well-behaved cream—to which I only had to add a smidgen of sugar. And my morning was saved.
But?
Please don’t tell Blue Bottle Coffee about my secret escapade. This tragedy, plus the great rescue, is all between you and me.