Homeopathic coffee?

There is nothing in the world like the aroma of freshly brewed good coffee.

I’m not a fussy person. I don’t mind if my apples have blemishes or if my steak is a little overcooked. But I want my coffee how I want my coffee. And I want GREAT coffee.

I live in a reasonable size regional city with cafes on every block, in every shopping centre and representing independent and major chains. Lots of choice. And that coffee aroma can waft past you at almost every turn. So you would think it would pretty easy to get a decent cup of coffee. A cup of coffee which delights the olfactory expectations.

Alas, no…

My coffee is very basic coffee – one step more than plain black coffee – I have a standard mug of flat white. No challenge trying to get the froth velvety before deftly applying it to the top of a cappuccino and dusting just the right amount of cocoa, no worry about making that perfect splash into a macchiato. Just a plain flat white on regular milk.

It must be a tough job being a barista. Seriously. Furiously beavering away, little steel jug of milk in one hand, coffee press thingy in the other, towel artfully draped over the shoulder…all the while confronted by a shop full of caffeine craving, fidgeting, frowning, waiting customers hanging out for their fix of the world’s favourite drug.

Why is there such a surplus of drab coffee, where my brew tastes like the grounds have been rinsed in dishwater before the resulting extracted coffee-crude is coupled with milk heated to within a minute of being converted to “Sunshine Powdered Full Cream” in a tin!

Perhaps it’s a cost saving measure. Perhaps by having fewer coffee grounds in that little metal thing they whack into the espresso machine they can give me my coffee and stretch their profits a little. After all – it still looks full if you don’t compress it first, despite being the coffee equivalent of an Aero bar.

I think I know what’s really going on here. It’s an effort by our caring baristas to make me healthy.

We all know the hip and trendy of this world embrace the faddiest of fads, and homeopathy is right up there. What we’re getting is homeopathic coffee! Homeopathy is where the "vibration" (yep, that's what they say...) of the original substance is retained in pure water.

The substance is diluted and diluted until only one molecule of it remains in 10-to-the-60^th molecules of water. Apparently that’s really potent stuff.

Trouble is, it would need a container 30 trillion times the size of the Earth to hold all the water for that one molecule of coffee.*

Forget the health kick – give me a good, strong, flavoursome, unburnt, non-scalded mug of plain old boring flat white.

Charge me a little more for it if you like because I’d prefer to pay more for that perfect mug than $3.50 for blistering, frothy milk with a bitter almost-coffee aftertaste.

And when I find somewhere which makes my coffee just the way I like it, that place becomes a little bit of heaven on Earth, a sanctuary, a hallowed place. And if they continue to deliver a great brew my loyalty will be unwavering!

In the meantime I guess I'll just have a cuppa tea.

*physicist Robert Park, American Physical Society