Before we start, this post has an ambient soundtrack to set the mood.
Just hit the play button and read on.

It’s another cold day here in Canberra, and as I go about my chores, I find myself returning to the stove a little too often to make a steaming mug of hot coffee.

Yes indeed, we own a Nespresso machine, and I love the rich crème espresso that it consistently pours at the touch of a button.

But I also am a big fan of the quiet simplicity of the old school pourover. It is a fundamentally different taste. To me, it is retro-coffee. Old school coffee. 1950s jazzclub coffee.

You can get all highbrow with weighing your beans, grinding on demand, measuring your pour and watching the water temperature (I have written about all that carry on here), but really….you just need a filter paper, a holder, some cheap supermarket coffee and a kettle (although investing in an expensive ‘gooseneck’ kettle gives you a much easier and more satisfying pour…IMHO).

So I stand at the stove, pouring over the ground coffee in little spiral motions. Inwards, outwards.

Watching the bloom and smelling the chocolate aroma. Drifting.

Away I go.

I am sitting in a small bespoke jazz café in Japan. Kyoto perhaps. It’s raining outside, but inside the place is a warm orange glow. Eclectic mismatching tables and chairs, old coffee mugs and romantic china teacups painted in bright patterns, finished with gold rims. The walls display old black and white posters from the 50s and 60s. The room is littered with framed prints, and found objects.

A floor to ceiling teak bookcase is crowded with well-used LP records. Perhaps once they were arranged into neat categories, but now they mix and stack in beautiful chaotic disarray. Here and there records sit without protective plastic sleeves . One throws a black vinyl rainbow on the wall.

Along the rows, some of the spines and dog-eared covers stick out. Bill Davis, Chet Baker, Sonny Rollins, Charlie Parker.

The place is abuzz with unintelligible conversation, and people catching up or sitting solo reading books. The sounds of clinking cups and utensils…and over the top of it Miles Davis soars from an old Yamaha stereo system.

Behind the counter, the staff chat and make tea and pourover coffee and delicious thick slices of pizza toast.

I stand at the stove and pour. I am there.