Yifan Jin

Dead to the moment

Here is the thing: I don't have 30 years left. I might have them on paper (again, knock on wood), but in reality, this number is much, much smaller.

Because during these 30 years, for the majority of the time, I won't be truly present. I won't live in the moment, but instead either regret the past or worry about the future. And worse, I'll be wasting my time with trivial things that don't bring me any closer to... well, anything.

Being present takes work. You need to remind yourself not to be dead to the moment. But the more you do this, the more effortless it becomes.

From Into the co-ferment kingdom: a trip to Finca Monteblanco

My personal goal was to demystify the world of funky coffees colloquially deemed “illegal” due to various competition policies. There remains plenty of hesitation in specialty coffee communities to accept these coffees. Fingers are pointed at the overarching perception that mysterious, secretive, and shady practices means that we can’t trust them. It’s critiqued as lipstick on a pig, that it’s a technique used to cover up bad farming techniques. And then there’s the flavor thing. Labeled as cheap tricks, fakery, deception; the material that goes in isn’t necessarily the flavor that comes out. But from the purist’s priorities of appreciating terroir, farming practices, and allowing the flavor of the bean to speak for itself, the additive processing crosses the line for many in terms of being “authentic” flavors.

As big a deal as coferments are made out to be, you can tell by how small a fraction of this post is about them that there’s more to it than just the funny fruit processing. Coffee still needs be planted and harvested with care, to be processed as washed or natural, and to be milled; green coffee, clean washed or cofermented, gets purchased and sold in the same way. Seeing the secrets behind the soup was as exciting as I’d hoped it’d be, but also, logically sound and demystified; it feels no more mysterious than any other modern technique like dark room or carbonic maceration that requires infrastructure, equipment, and experimental trials to dial in. Perhaps that’s how it was meant to be - as arcane as your imagination wanted, fueled by moral opposition and controversy, but ultimately, exactly what it says on the bag.

The pictures make the post worth reading alone but also hopefully this does de-stigmatize coferments, even if by a little. I do have to say personally I've enjoyed them, although maybe some coferments are a bit too strong.

Test to see if this works

This is a test quote

Seems like with some light tweaking was able to get this to work.