Bill on a Love for Coffee: Awakening to Flavor, Craft, and Community

Bill: I met Joe, who was known as @thebxbarista through Instagram, like most of the people I’ve met through coffee. The first time we physically met was at Coffee Fest in New York a couple of years ago, maybe two years ago. We kind of just clicked, got along really well, and we kept in touch. The next thing I knew, I was being invited to go around with people I didn’t know to check out Long Island coffee shops. That was the first time we met at Southdown in Huntington. We drank a glass of coffee, got to know each other, and talked about coffee.

Let’s talk about coffee. I think we didn’t give enough context. What is coffee to you?

Bill: Coffee for me is water and oxygen—you need both to survive as a human being—and I believe that the third element is coffee. I’ve been drinking coffee since I was 11 years old. I’m 44 now, so we’re talking 33 years of coffee experience—a veteran, in my mind.

Bill: I grew up in Fishkill, New York, a sleepy town in Dutchess County. My father was a correction officer, and he would get up at the same time every day, 4:45 a.m., and by 5:15 he would make coffee in the kitchen, which was really close to my bedroom. From a very early age, the first thing I smelled every morning was coffee. Eventually, I went into the kitchen and asked for some. I’m sure I spit it out the first time, like most people.

Bill: I was lucky that my father drank good coffee, and he made strong, good coffee. He made it in a mocha pot on top of the stove, which is a very old-school, traditional way to make espresso-style coffee. I’ve always drunk manually brewed, good coffee. I didn’t grow up on drip or diner coffee. Of course, I drank that stuff too—when you’re in high school or college, you’re just drinking coffee for caffeine, which is a totally different mindset. There also wasn’t such a thing as specialty coffee in the 90s—it didn’t exist. Coffee has been around for a long time, much longer than specialty coffee, and people have been drinking it a certain way for generations.

Bill: For some people, coffee is just a warm beverage that gives them a kick of caffeine and wakes them up. That’s all they want it for, and there’s nothing wrong with that. I’ve always felt that coffee is comparable to wine or beer. Even though I don’t drink alcohol, some people will go to a liquor store and buy a $5 or $6 bottle of wine that is terrible and think it’s great. By all means, enjoy that wine. Then there are people who wouldn’t even think of buying cheap wine—they’ll spend $300–$400 on a bottle, store it in their cellar, and save it for special occasions because they know it’s special. You get the same thing with beer. Some people are happy with a tall-boy Budweiser after work, while others seek craft beer, small-batch brewers, and regional varieties. Neither approach is wrong—it’s just different. Coffee works the same way.

Bill: For me, the awakening happened—I like to call it the Awakening. For a long time, coffee was dark. You probably needed milk because it would rip your stomach apart—it was just too harsh. The Awakening happened when I was in San Francisco for my birthday in the mid-2000s. I walked past a coffee shop in the Mission District and smelled coffee like I’d never smelled before. It was intoxicating. I couldn’t believe it. I loved coffee already, but this felt different.

Bill: I was behind my wife and my best friend, who were walking ahead of me. I stopped, turned, and went right into the store without saying anything. The place was called Ritual Roasters. They had a roaster there, which I’d never seen in a shop before. A lady behind the bar saw on my face that I was clearly out of my element. There was apparatus behind the bar for what would eventually become pour-over coffee. I didn’t know what it was, but I told her I smelled the greatest coffee I’d ever smelled and needed to try it. I didn’t know what to order. She gave me a flight. I think it was either a Kenya or an Ethiopia. They offered three different ways to taste that one coffee, which was eye-opening. I didn’t know you could taste one coffee in multiple ways.

Bill: She put in front of me a pour-over glass of coffee, a shot of espresso, and my first cortado, which I think was called a Gibraltar. I had never seen a Gibraltar before. I didn’t usually drink espresso straight because I had so much coffee experience already. I tried all three, and I was completely floored. They tasted the same, but different. They offered different tasting notes and flavors, including mixing milk, which I had never done—I always drank coffee black. The Gibraltar tasted like heaven on earth.

Bill: I immediately went to their shelf and bought a $5 plastic pour-over, which I still have, along with some filters. I watched her make the pour-over, which was on a Hario V60, and brought it home to experiment. I bought a bag or two of coffee, and I’ve never looked back.

Bill: What’s important is that their coffee was roasted very lightly, not dark. I now know I’m definitely on the light side of the roasting spectrum. Light roasting allows the coffee to taste like what it is—a fruit. Coffee should be sweet. When it’s not sweet, it’s because of the roasting process. The darker you roast, the more notes you get from the roasting itself rather than the natural flavors. Most people don’t know this, and it’s hard to get them to switch. High-grade specialty coffee is sweet, full of natural flavors, and doesn’t require milk or sugar.

Bill: I’ve even turned my wife into a coffee snob. She barely drinks coffee now—she only drinks lattes made with single-origin espressos. That’s crazy to me. I don’t expect many people to change, but it can happen. I wish more people would give it a chance. That said, I would never tell someone not to go to Starbucks. As much as I don’t like Starbucks, you have to be thankful they exist. Without Starbucks, we might not have third-wave coffee or specialty coffee shops where we have them today. Starbucks made higher-level coffee accessible, even though I don’t consider it great coffee.

Bill: Part of what Starbucks did was marketing. They created an educational bridge that didn’t exist in general coffee knowledge. Starbucks opened common ground for people to meet and commune. The same thing other coffee shops did for me led me to meet people like you. I feel like the best thing you can do for yourself is be open-minded about things you already think you know about coffee.