Cups of Coffee – Past, Imperfect

(The Perfect Cup Revisited)

For Publication November, 2023

Since the first printing of The Perfect Cup in June 1991 a lot has changed in the world of coffee. The aspiration to find that perfect cup of coffee and the ambition to make it have driven thousands of businesses, farms, cafés and careers over the past thirty plus years. There is no let up in the hopes of millions of people today who are working with coffee and trying to make it better.

While working with coffee has been a rewarding and satisfying adventure for many it has not provided the fulfillment that everyone has sought from it. An industry unto itself has evolved to help those working with coffee make more from it for themselves and their families.

Finding coffee’s place in our environment and modulating its impact upon our climate have also become factors by which we judge our cups of coffee and their ascents toward the more perfect cup.

The Perfect Cup became, accidentally, a quest foretold, and from what many who’ve read the book have told me, it sent quite a few coffee lovers upon that path. Their goal has never been to find that single Perfect Cup but to keep it in sight while constantly setting it a little further ahead.

This is the next installment in that adventure.

Timothy J. Castle

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