Mindfulness Through Ritual: My Love Of Pour Over Coffee

I accidentally became curious about rituals while diving deep into my quest for making a better cup of coffee at home. 

By becoming intentional about the process of making coffee, something that I do at least twice per day, I was forced to stop running on autopilot for a few minutes and become mindful of my actions.

Rituals have been a part of the human experience in one form or another for millennia.

In tribal cultures, each important life event was highlighted by ritualistic ceremonies unique to each tribe. 

As we evolved, so did our social norms. Tribes grew bigger. Villages became cities and territories became countries. As human society got more structured, so did our spiritual beliefs. For hundreds of years, organized religion was the main source of ritualism in modern society.

Over the past 200 years. the human race has grown from an estimated 990 million to over 7 billion souls. 

Technological advancement followed suit. It took just 40 years between the invention of the airplane in 1903 until we used one to drop a nuclear bomb.

The pace of progress has not slowed down. Technology has had seen even more astonishing growth since the 1970s, as rotary phones and 8 track tapes were replaced by smartphones and Spotify. For reference, the smartphone in our pockets has millions of times more computing power than the guidance computers of the 1969 Apollo 11 mission.

These technological advancements have completely changed our habits and rituals. Many tasks and chores that people use to regularly do themselves are now automated or outsourced. 

Things have never been so convenient and we have never been so distracted. 

Is more convenient always better? 

In the age of having access to everything at the touch of a screen, is there still value in doing things in a more manual, time-intensive way?

A Bit of Coffee History

As I dug deeper into brewing a better cup of coffee at home, I pulled on the thread of my curiosity about its origins and techniques and quickly fell down the rabbit hole.

I was stunned to learn that the beloved beverage that is in higher demand today than ever before has been a key component of this exponential technological shift from the very beginning. The delicious psychoactive drug that is now a global commodity and is supplied by our employers for free used to be a scarce and expensive treat.

Before becoming available on every street corner and gas station, coffee was at the center of many wars and revolutions. It was also the cause of generations of pain and hardship in the slave camps of the first coffee colonies. It literally shaped the landscape of coffee-growing countries as forests were mowed down to create more and more plantations to fulfill the ever-expanding global demands. Although the situation has improved, there are many who still suffer from coffee exploitation.

One coffee-fueled revolution, in particular, has shaped society in a monumental way: The industrial revolution.

Prior to the introduction of coffee in Europe in the 17th century, alcoholic beverages were the hydration of choice in the household and at work. The infrastructure around the expanding cities was not advanced enough to supply safe drinking water to the growing populous and the fermentation process of alcohol killed harmful bacteria and made the water safe to drink.

Being tipsy before lunch is not very conducive to productivity or the execution of complex tasks like making quality goods, operating machinery or building infrastructure. 

Coffee was a game-changer not only because of its invigorating properties that allowed for a more focused workforce capable of working around the clock but also because the process of boiling water killed much of the harmful bacteria that it contained. 

It turns out that people who drink a bunch of coffee are more productive than those who drink beer for breakfast.

In the 1900s, the effect of coffee on productivity was so significant that factory owners in Winsconsin officially introduced the coffee break to the workplace. 

If you’ve ever worked in an office, a factory or on any job site, you know that the coffee break is central to the standard workday. It is even part of labour laws and union agreements. Don’t mess with people’s coffee break.

The Coffee Ritual

If you are a coffee lover, for its flavor, its effects or both, chances are you’ve developed some sort of coffee ritual. 

It may be putting the single-serve cup into the machine and pressing the button, or dosing an arbitrary amount of preground coffee into the drip machine filter and waiting for it to do its thing. If you are really into it, you might already be grinding freshly roasted beans and pulling delicious shots of espresso from a fancy Italian-made machine.

There is no right or wrong way to get a coffee fix, but we all have our habits around it.

While reading about coffee history, I was amazed to find that one of the very first coffee rituals ever is still practiced today.

Coffee is believed to have been discovered in Ethiopia in the 9th century. The story goes a little bit like this: 

A goat herder noticed that his goats became especially energetic when they ate the magic berries of an unknown dark green shrubbery. 

He became curious about the effects of these berries and shared this discovery with a local abbot who made a hot beverage from the fruit in an attempt to replicate the stimulating effects. He found that the magic berries made him more alert during his evening prayers. Knowledge of this magical bean began to spread and the rest is history.

Ethiopian families still send their children to knock on the doors of neighbours to invite them over and share a traditional coffee ceremony. The host will roast green coffee beans in a pan over an open flame. They will then ground the coffee by hand, with a pestle and mortar before steeping it in a large pot, letting the grounds fall to the bottom and serving it to guests. 

We have come a long way from this labour-intensive ceremonial sharing of the family coffee, to single-serve coffee pods and gigantic corporations like Starbucks making sure that we have access to premium coffee on any city block.

following my curiosity on the quest for better-tasting coffee at home, I was brought back to the basics. Back to one of the most simple ways to make coffee.

Back to the pour over.