A feeling that most Cornellians can relate to is the need for caffeine. Whether you need a cup of coffee in the morning to wake you up, a cup during that afternoon slump to cheer you up, several late night cups to keep you up, or all three, almost everyone here drinks coffee at some point, most of us daily. But to a lot of us, coffee is just what we use it for; something to wake/cheer/keep us up. Many of us slog through life, coffee cup in hand, never realizing the work and artisanship that goes into brewing our daily caffeine dose. Americans tend to like Brazilian, Colombian, and Ethiopian coffees because they are dark and strong. This has to do with how the beans, which come from coffee cherries, are harvested, dried/washed, roasted, and ground. We like our coffee strong enough to wake the dead, with deep, smoky, chocolaty notes. In other parts of the world, such as Eastern Asia, they like lighter roasts, with more acidic and tea-like flavours. Gimme! Coffee spoke with us about the differences in how they prepare their coffee from chains like Starbucks and Dunkin Donuts. They also spoke about how they source from individual farms, and how those types of relationships both get the farms more money and the company more coffee. I was also surprised to learn that both of our visitors had began as baristas. One of them, Ben, spoke on this, on how most people don’t associate being a barista with having a career and having somewhere to grow – but there are plenty of opportunities, especially at Gimme! Coffee, to rise to managerial positions and become new employee trainers and move up within the company. They were both definitely passionate about coffee and their jobs, and the samples they prepared were delicious. It was nice to try coffee not doused in cream and sugar like I usually have it when it’s from preground coffee sitting in a pot. They ground the beans at the table and brewed each type of coffee at different water temperatures. It was surprising the difference in taste that the individual beans could have. My favourite was the Ethiopian coffee – it was chocolaty and faintly fruity, and a little sweet, something I could drink black in the morning.

If I could buy a dripper and a coffee grinder and a kettle with adjustable temperatures and a server and bags of whole beans and filters, you could bet I’d be here in my room brewing gourmet cups of coffee. But the necessary tools are surprisingly expensive. The dripper alone is $40, and their coffee costs 3 or more times the amount per bag I would pay for a bag of my preferred home brew coffee, Starbucks’ Cafe Verona. So despite my plans for the future to be really fancy and have an espresso machine (which forces water through the coffee grounds with 6x atmospheric pressure!), for now I’ll stick to my Keurig.