"I recently read your editorial in the Autumn 2016 edition of the Coffee Magazine about Finding the God Cup. This small, yet very interesting editorial sparked my interest in writing a little piece on my own experience of the God Cup for my blog."
We love hearing from our readers! Thank you to JP who took the time to share this with us!
The Search For The God Cup.
Submitted by JP Blignaut, originally published on his blog The Neighbourhood Barista
The years have accumulated so quickly, I can hardly remember exactly when it happened. It was about three years ago to be precise. The busy parking area in front of the Thai food restaurant that I was working at the time was filled with people doing their daily grocery shopping. A colleague and I enjoyed the spring breeze, as winter has just been swept under the carpet. A fellow friend and employee parked her car near where we were sitting and carried a plastic bag, the content yet to me unknown. As we boil the kettle and she sets up her apparatus, I find myself for the first time in the presence of an Aeropress. The strange looking cylindrical equipment, brewing my first cup of coffee for the day truly intrigued me. As I take that first sip, with a grin and a smile, and get the fresh aroma of freshly ground coffee, dark roasted nuts and hints of honey – I indulge my senses in this extremely flavorful coffee experience. With my knowledge about coffee still being very slim, I can to this day remember how that cup of coffee truly opened my eyes to the world of specialty coffee.
Three years down the road, numerous amounts of coffees later and speciality coffee still leaves me with a tingle on my spine. After so many different coffees and origins, I find it difficult to reminisce the true excitement of absorbing speciality coffee. Don’t get me wrong, coffee still leaves me speechless every time. In the process of improving your knowledge on coffee and finding that one special cup, we in a sense are looking for that God Cup. The cup that started everything. The cup that took you from drinking a normal hot beverage to looking at coffee differently in every aspect. Yet, here we are. Testing, improving and experimenting each day with new and different coffees, still in the search of that perfect God Cup. To my senses, it is very subjective from person to person, although it is almost hard to say that your God Cup may never cross your path again, there is almost that small lingering excitement inside of you which transcends you into the playing fields of specialty coffee. Over the last few months, I have learned that looking critically at each coffee removes many different variables which will or can only draw you closer to finding the God Cup.
Although it is somewhat extremely difficult to find your God Cup in a crowd of second wave drinkers, the possibility still exists. Yet it is not what other perceive of coffee, but rather what you make of it. The coffee movement and revolution in small towns and cities, like mine, has made it ever easier for me to never stop looking for my flavourful friends. The world has now become a place inside your pocket, with a view taps on your phone, you can order different varietals of coffees from anywhere at any time. The experience, priceless. What has made us become so indulged and so intrigued with coffee, that we don’t mind looking at the price of the coffee before buying it? Nothing stops us from looking for that one cup of pure enjoyment. Yet, it has made it possible for us to use our God Cup experience as a sort of reference. We never stop, that is the true magic of this madness. But what many will disregard, we take the seriousness of our coffee to new frontiers. Yet coffee never fails to impress, we are in a sense just looking for that God Cup to create something new in our lives, may it be finding new brewing methods, or perhaps re-inventing already existing coffee brewing methods.
As the years have turned into so many memories, from my very first French Press to purchasing my Aeropress, to indulging in what a Cortado is, the God Cup has not yet made its way into my life again. As I draw closer to the end of an exciting time in my life, with my university studies 7 weeks away from being finished, I can truly say that this is the end of a history which will only start the trail of many new and exciting things, one of them being speciality coffee. The innocence of the God Cup, the power of the indulging flavours and the true excitement of enjoying each coffee in many different forms creates the path for you to look further than your current horizons. Today it is the flavorful notes and characteristics of pour overs and weighed espresso’s which draws me into the complex and exciting world of specialty coffee. Nevertheless, the God Cup is out there, we just need to look for it. A single cup of coffee can change your life in one sip. Looking for that God Cup may take years, perhaps you and myself may never find it again, but until then the true beauty is that we must never stop looking for it.
Unfortunately this comes with a price and a label. The price of perhaps denying certain coffees or disregarding the fact that one coffee may not be so good above others. We are labeled by a society of second wave drinkers as coffee snobs or perhaps spoiled coffee lovers, but we are only looking for that one thing which has changed our lives for the better. So where will your God Cup take you? The possibilities are endless, perhaps the journey is only now starting, yet the idea or the notion that one can find that true God Cup again one day is what drives us to never stop looking, never stop drinking and for the rest of our lives, never stop tasting the world through one single sip.
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