Couture Beans of London
London may be the Coffee Capital of Europe, but during an 11-month stay in the UK city, I struggled to find home brew satisfaction. My quest to find dark roast beans took me all over the city to all sorts of coffee purveyors to listen to all sorts of lectures on water temperature and roasting times and the importance of never, ever, ever letting coffee sit in the vessel in which it was made. What I learned is that while tea remains a national staple, coffee has become an obsession -- every day, the UK drinks over 55 million cups of coffee – that the epicenter is London, that thousands of hours of effort go into every mug of specialty coffee. Most important, I learned what it means to travel, to stretch the comfort zone, and whether knowledge really can breed appreciation.