Coffee, my beloved

I have many, many vices, which I won't enumerate here, but one of my greatest vices is coffee. Living in England, where a good cup of coffee is about as rare as the white stag or the black rhino is a challenge, now I am generally not a food snob, I love nothing more than a pub lunch or a takeaway, but when it comes to coffee, I am a braggart, I abhor instant coffee, I'd rather just drink tea than subject myself to a mug of tasteless watery nescafe.

I also loathe instant espresso machines. Whilst placing a capsule into a machine may be incredibly convenient, this doesn't make up for it being awful for the environment, and for it lacking the refinement of using real coffee.

I do, if I'm at my parent's home in Paris, like to use whole beans, and grind them myself using a peugeot coffee grinder my mother received as a christmas present from my father a few years ago. Yes it is hard work grinding the coffee beans by hand, and it isn't something that you can do every day, but on the occasions when you have time, boy is it worth it.

For some people, coffee is just a means to a highly caffeinated end, but for me, coffee is a ritual, and thus the choice of coffee beans is also highly important, and for me the best coffee comes from guatemala. I am generally fonder of coffee from the americas than of african coffee, which tends to be rather harsh and overly bitter. Guatemalan coffee is rounder and richer than kenyan or ethiopian coffee, and the bitterness isn't overwhelming.

I also feel that what you use to make your coffee is important. A few years ago I was given an italian espresso machine, you fill the bottom with water and the middle with coffee, the water boils and the pressure pushes it up through the coffee making a delicious espresso.

If I am in search of a longer coffee then I am also partial to a cafetiere or even a drip coffee, which makes a more protracted, and a slower coffee. I also can't abide by drinking coffee out of a mug, and always use a small espresso cup.

Though it might seem like my obsession is fairly extreme, coffee is possibly one of the only things of which I actually consider myself a connoisseur. So while this article might seem rather pretentious and entirely lacking in introspection, I am well aware that I take my caffeinated vice a little too seriously.