My boyfriend loves coffee, as do I. His motto is don’t scrimp on the cost of coffee. Buy the best you can afford. It’s one of the few vices he has left, cigars being the other. As we were wandering around Antigua, he kept looking for the coffee roasting place he had purchased coffee from in the past.
Now you can get coffee beans everywhere in Guatemala. You can go on coffee plantation tours and watch how it’s grown, picked and processed. It’s everywhere. They had it in colorful cloth sacks at the airport. But my guy wanted it from this particular place. The guy who owns the place is an ex-pat American and a bit eccentric; talks a million miles a second, too much caffeine perhaps.
We were walking and walking around trying to find the right place. Finally, my boyfriend asks a man walking down the street (looks like an American student type) if he knows where the coffee place is next to the gym. I’m thinking sure this is gonna work. And low and behold the guy says “You mean the crazy American guy? Yeah, it’s down and over a couple of blocks. I’ll walk you over. I have a few extra minutes.”
So we found Tony. He has lived in Antigua since the early 80’s. He left America to get away from the Industrial machine. He said when he got to Antigua there were no cars, no tourists and not as much noise and pollution. He’s had the coffee business for a long time and writes political stuff on the Internet that is apparently banned in various places due to the volatility of it. He rattled off a website where we could read it but I didn’t catch it. He was talking really fast.
He had an old coffee roaster going and 4 bins by the counter. One had cocoa beans, then three bins of roasted coffee; light, medium and dark roast. I asked what he thought was best for espresso. He said you know I thought dark for a long time but many have told me that they prefer medium and now I agree, medium roast for espresso. But you pick whatever you think you would want.We decided on 8 pounds of medium and 2 of dark. 45 quetzels per pound (about $6.00 U.S.).
We ask if we can get a sample. Tony says sure and proceeds to make us two small cups of really good coffee with fresh ground beans, boiling water and a coffee sock. So now he has to bag it up. My boyfriend says, quietly, don’t ask too many questions or we’ll be here all afternoon. So we sat and had our coffee and watched him first weigh out the coffee into 10 plastic bags, a pound each. Then put each plastic bag into a paper bag and staple it. He would get a bit distracted here and there but pretty much stayed on task. We handed over $450 Q and were on our way. I am sure the coffee from other sources would be good but this experience will make it extra special when enjoying an espresso at home.
