Hassan Almadhari

‘Perseverance’

Essay extract

To feel a feeling is human. No, it concerns being alive. Often than not, I find numbness in my heart that isolates all my feelings in an outer sphere. I know they are there, but I cannot reach those feelings to feel them. Pain and happiness are distinctive from far away, but the barrier that keeps me away from them gets stronger each day. I ask myself to persevere and fight until I achieve my temporary goal, but when I do, another one rises to leave me anxious for a new fight. “You must get up and continue.” I do get up even if I get knocked down multiple times consecutively. No one tells me that it is okay to be tired. “The voice” cares only for its success in maintaining its current state. They care to preserve their values, money, and systems. I am tired, and I want to feel. I cannot imagine being alone. I am searching for something authentic. The clearest sound that echoes this genuine feeling is “I want to go.”

Effort

Whenever I want to accomplish anything, I have to put effort into it. Learning a new language can be difficult. Memorizing a few words each day and reading about the language is easy but practicing it daily and integrating it into our lives is all about effort. I have witnessed people who learn new things without effort and others who spend a long time trying their best just to scratch the surface. But no effort is truly lost because by investing our time, we can learn something. Passion correlates with effort. The more we are passionate about something, the more we tend to put effort into it. I know my love for something simple to the public eye, like coffee, opened the doors to understanding that drink’s complexity. Like anything else, a good cup of coffee requires effort. 

Roasting coffee is a very complex process. During a course in a coffee lab in Oregon, we used small roasters to test new roasts of fresh green coffee. Coffee roasting requires a high level of heat which can be a fire hazard if not handled correctly. The instructor advised us to keep an eye on the roasters during the fifteen to twenty-minute process to avoid potential fires. This does not pose a problem with Arabic coffee because the coffee beans are roasted until they are yellow. Black coffee is roasted until it becomes brown or dark brown, but it is much more than that. The high heat results in coffee beans cracking, making a subtle sound. It is almost like a pop of popcorn. Two cracks occur during roasting, and the difference between the two is what determines light and dark roasts. Light roast occurs shortly after the first crack, while darker roasts are close to and after the second crack. While the roasters I used had a timer, there had been a few instances when the coffee cracked much earlier than intended. It is important to keep an eye on those small roasters.

I worked in roasting coffee but am not an expert in it. The bigger machines require extensive programming where you have to input heat and time for keeping consistency of the coffee beans. Once the coffee is done roasting, there will be shells that need removing from the beans called chaff. Chaff is a green to brownish shell that falls off the green beans due to the intense heat. After the coffee is cleaned from chaffs and left to cool down, it goes inside a bag with an air valve. This special bag continues the roasting process. It helps with coffee degassing the CO2 trapped inside after the roasting process. We do not want coffee to lose all CO2, but the initial one is important because the extra CO2 contributes to the taste of coffee. CO2 adds resistance to coffee during brewing which can ruin the taste of coffee if there is a significant amount still trapped inside coffee. Also, the lack of CO2 may result in coffee being under-extracted from brewing too fast. Before trying the roast, coffee is usually left for a couple of days to a week.

“The voice” persuaded me to believe I was lazy if my effort was less than excellent. I know I am not a lazy person, but that collective “voice” keeps hovering over my head, weighing me down. When I started working in a field I did not like, I wanted to accomplish the basic tasks I was supposed to do. I never did anything extra; I refused to do anything extra. Some saw it as lazy, but I did not feel the need to put the mental and physical effort into something that would not reward me. I felt the need to go with each day that kept passing at that job. It is not death that I am speaking of but rather a form of escapism of constraints of necessity. It is not exactly a necessity but imposed expectations of “the voice” as the way you fit within this world. I found happiness in doing volunteer work for cafes eight hours a day. I managed to put more effort into it, and people seemed to enjoy my coffee. I do not believe we need to persevere for a job because it was the only thing we found. There is always something within our passionate efforts.

Stay

Our lives are very referential. Any action we take has the past in mind to ensure we are safe. It is a form of trial and error, except that the trial was not necessarily conducted by us. We witness the present through the lenses of the past, trying to predict the future. A study showed that X number of people who progressed smoothly from A to B had fulfilled lives and contributed to society more than those who had faced obstacles. The conclusion is that we must ensure that people move from A to B since it benefits us the most. I do not want to choose that path. I am sure there are many letters in life that we can choose from for our goal, but that is not how I have been taught growing up. The safe option is to stay still and live daily in a mind-numbing routine. I do not want to stay. I want to move and feel every movement of my body instead of becoming frozen in a miserable machine. I do not want to preserve those ideologies.

The topic of storing coffee properly has been around for decades. Since it is a product many people want within their reach at home, many methods of storing coffee have been invented. One of those storing techniques that I have witnessed at home was freezing coffee. My mother used to keep coffee in a repurposed container inside our freezer for a year. When stored in a freezer, coffee loses its freshness, especially if it is not vacuum sealed. Every time we opened the container, we introduced humid air to the coffee, which resulted in the crystallization of ice, ruining the beans. Coffee is best when it is fresh, but if we need to store coffee at home for a long time, our best bet is to portion and vacuum seal the coffee. 

A tip from coffee specialist James Hoffman is to leave the coffee outside overnight to defrost before opening it to prevent any condensation. I never put my coffee in the freezer, but if I get a giant bag as a gift, I may consider it. I have to mention that freezing Arabic coffee is quite different as well. Arabic coffee is made from super fine coffee grounds, and it is mixed with some spices like cardamom and cloves. This mixture can make the coffee spoil faster, which makes freezing the mixture important to maintain its quality. Saffron is a spice that is also added to Arabic coffee, but we add saffron during the brewing process, which happens in a pot over the stove. It is a very aromatic coffee because of the spices, and since it is a lightly roasted coffee, it maintains a high level of caffeine. The strength of coffee in terms of flavor and caffeine explains the small cup we use to serve it in.

There is a big coffee storing method that we have to talk about, which is freeze-drying coffee. This is the most famous method because most of the coffee in cupboards is instant. Freeze-drying is about brewing coffee and then freezing it in a -40C freezer. After freezing the coffee, the frozen crystals enter a drying chamber with a vacuum in it to preserve the aromas during the slow drying process. This process creates solid pieces of brewed coffee that need water to hydrate again into a full cup. Many companies utilize this method because it gives their coffee harvest a long shelf life. The portions are easier to handle during packaging as well. Most big companies freeze-dry their coffee, but Specialty coffee roasters utilize this method with their seasonal coffee beans.

Many of those storage methods are concerned with freezing. There is a new method where roasters brew coffee and use liquid nitrogen to freeze it. They work out the ratio of hot water you need to defrost the coffee brew and take it into account when you add it. This means the coffee will never feel watery if you follow the specific grams of water you are supposed to incorporate into the frozen brew. It is a relatively new method I have never seen yet around where I live, but many people in the Specialty industry are promoting it and vouching for its quality. Personally, I keep my coffee in the same bag it comes in. The bag ensures that CO2 can escape from the valve, and there is a plastic strip to seal the bag once you are finished with it. If you love coffee and drink it daily, the coffee you buy should stay fresh until you buy the next bag.

Of course, I am scared. If things were to stay the same, I know nothing would affect me negatively. Life does not stay the same, nor should I. I mentioned escapism because the idea of leaving unpleasant events behind may seem like fiction, but I do not believe it to be. We are tied to the idea of staying and remaining within our comforts because we are afraid of what may happen if we break free from our mental and physical constraints. Hypothetically, we could stay the same and not progress at all. We could live day by day the exact same, but is it really living? External factors might apply to that routine scenario but to stay means we are not experiencing life. Nothing is more detached from reality than being absent from it and the present. It is the mental state of auto-piloting life.

I am sure those around me wish for me to stay home and live the same life they are living. If you are truly content with where you were placed in this life, there is nothing wrong with staying. I do not find happiness in living the same life my parents and siblings are living. I constantly feel out of place when we sit in a family meeting. I enjoy the company of my family, but I feel a calling to leave that place. There was an unpleasantness in my life, but I am seeking to go to find home.

Preserve

Preserve

Memories of those we lost growing up

Preserve

Because hardships hit and the world erupts

Preserve

Whatever relationships we have left

Preserve

Because we are never truly alone

I want to go

I want to feel

I want silence

We cannot move around “the voice.” We all hear it in one form or another, and this “voice” stigmatizes our choices in life if we do not conform with it. Escaping that “voice” is possible, but we are all subjected to it during the first stages of our lives. I want to keep my sense of myself for as long as I can, preserving it in an eternal moment. Some people put effort into making things stay the same; others use that effort to change everything. The future is always uncertain. Life can get stagnant, and it can easily descend into chaos. I want to hold onto what I know to be true. Not what I was told to be true. I want to seek something within myself and the world, not within a created sphere. I want to feel the joy of silence rather than its misery.

Caffeine is a substance that I think about all the time. I need this chemical to function, yet I know consuming more and more of it will bring anxiety. In that sense, I like to drink my coffee hot instead of iced. The human body takes a while to bring the heat down of a hot beverage, but it is easier to bring iced coffee to body temperature. Caffeine hits faster if you consume an iced coffee or a cold brew. Most Specialty coffee has less caffeine than commercial coffee. It is because Specialty Arabica contains less caffeine than commercial Robusta coffee. Robusta is known as farmers’ coffee because farmers need caffeine before a long workday. It does not mean that Robusta coffee is not good, but if someone needs a lighter cup in terms of strength and caffeine, they have to go with Arabica. Roasters usually use Robusta for dark roasts and Arabica for lighter ones since Arabica has more variety in flavors. The more defined variety of flavors in Arabica makes it more appealing from a sensory perspective.

Coffee’s connection to caffeine makes it have a negative connotation. Coffee is not a stranger to controversies. A few years ago, the state of California wanted to put a cancer warning on coffee because of a chemical compound called acrylamide. Acrylamide is found in other foods prepared at high temperatures as well, but the amount of it in coffee is so insignificant to cause any issues. Coffee, with caffeine in it, has proved in many studies that it helps with some cardiac diseases and reduces the risk of multiple kinds of cancer. Caffeine can cause anxiety, and for people who consume coffee daily, withdrawal symptoms during its absence. People who do not want caffeine can always opt for decaffeinated coffee. “Decaf sucks!” is what many people will say, but there are decent decaffeinated beans out there. Caffeine has a bitter taste, so when it is removed from coffee, it loses some of its bitterness. Some Arabica coffee trees that were discovered in Brazil were naturally caffeine free. The best caffeine-free coffees are the ones that do not use external chemicals to remove caffeine.

There is a big misconception among coffee drinkers that black coffee has less caffeine than coffee with milk. It depends on what kind of beverage we are drinking. Espresso-based drinks like lattes and mochas tend to have a double shot of espresso in them. A double shot has roughly 150mg of caffeine in it, but it varies depending on the roast and coffee beans. A cup of black coffee contains around 95mg of caffeine which is less than a latte. Espresso is more concentrated, and you need more coffee grounds to brew it than one cup of black coffee. Filter black coffee tends to have less percentage of TDS (total dissolved solids) in it than espresso. Milk is not a factor in reducing caffeine, but it can help reduce the bitterness of coffee and sometimes the acidity. With enough knowledge about coffee, you can tweak a lot in your morning black brew, from caffeine and bitterness to acidity and sweetness. 

When I was fifteen, my father and I visited my uncle. After we had a good dinner with him, enjoying Italian food, we drove back home. I was sleepy until I saw the Molotov cocktail slamming on the street in front of us while my dad was driving. It felt like an action film with the police officers showing shortly after and started shooting their guns in the direction where the Molotov had come from. My father was calm and kept driving, avoiding the shattered flame on the road and moving straight ahead until we could no longer see what was happening. I have not had a similar experience since that day, but I remember my father’s resilience. I am sure he was calm because I needed him to be calm then. We never spoke about what had happened. It was a scary experience that passed. I cannot remember anything else from the night beside the moving streetlights.Sometimes I wonder if I am still in the car waiting to get back home. I want to feel like time is moving in the present, but in my mind, it is stuck in the past. I ask myself to endure anything that comes my way, but I wonder, how long can I keep this façade together? Am I losing my cool already? No one tells you it is okay to be tired. “The voice,” asks you to keep going, to always reach the top. We have to do our best and do nothing but our best. It feels like I am burning. I want to go where I am not prompted by something to be someone. I want to go where I feel safe and no longer hidden. I want to go where I can find myself. I know I hear it, and you hear it too. Sometimes we ignore it and move forward, and in others, we cannot. I think the path to moving forward is to stop internalizing that “voice.” Once we do not consider it as a part of our lives, we will wake up in the morning to fix a hot brew of coffee before we go. We are going back home.