In the beginning was the bean

July 11, 2022
Business

"When did I drink my first cup of coffee?" Hardly anyone will probably be able to answer this question with certainty. That's strange, because usually we humans have a pretty good memory for pleasures. Whenever two of our senses are short-circuited with each other, they form a thick knot in the web of our memories that won't come loose on its own. We know this. We all know that one pop song that we can't get out of our heads because we heard it on "that" night. The smell of lemon and cleaner might bring back memories of the cafeteria at school. Looking at a winter landscape may awaken vague memories of Christmas and make us shiver. Most people still remember how awful their first cigarette tasted.

The memory of the first cup of coffee, however, seems to have disappeared from most people's minds, even though most of us can hardly imagine a life without coffee. The cup in the morning has become too banal, too everyday and self-evident for us, too simple to prepare, too routine to buy. We buy coffee just like we buy a bottle of water. But coffee can be so much more than brown powder that we boil down to a hot brew in an espresso machine.On 21 March 2021, my wife and I decided to build up a coffee empire, even though we don't know the first thing about coffee.How does coffee get from the mist-covered slopes of the Andes here to Germany and later into my cup?

How do you make good coffee in the first place? What is good coffee? What is the meaning of life? How will the universe end? And the most important question of all, how do I successfully build a coffee empire? 30Join us in the places where our coffee is grown. Let's visit the local farmers together. Be there when the beans are collected and fermented. Pack the jute bags with us and join us in the queue at customs. Let us roast, weigh and pack the beans together. Let us enjoy a cup of good coffee together and learn why life is too short for cheap coffee.

Robert Petzold

Everything before the first coffee in the morning is self-defense.