About A Buddha, Coffee

Truck stop coffee

January 25th, 2014, 2pm

Here we have the little immobile brewmobile of Idobata¹, named after the Yagō² in Zushi to which our friendly proprietor retires after a long day of slow brews for slower-moving visitors from Connecticut, New Jersey and Bangalore.

Our fearless guide the Mudskipper Mod and just landed journeyman An Amal procured a City Roast a piece while I selected the French – No. 7 and No. 2 from the Horiguchi repertoire.

Twenty five grams for Jersey, twenty each for Connecticut and Bangalore. Power from the family home mobilized the motors which moved the gears which ground the beans. Boiling water was measured for volume and temperature with instruments and movements of precision. Water fell in a perfectly smooth, perfectly quiet column, no more than a few millimeters wide. The extraction radius was maybe twice that, right down the center of the bloom.

We stood and sipped. Our pupils dilated. This back of the truck operation was no back of the mountain operation.

Yagō (屋号), literally meaning “house name”, is a term applied in traditional Japanese culture to names passed down within a guild, studio, or other circumstance other than blood relations. The term most often refers to the guild names of kabuki actors, but is also applicable to the names artists take from their masters or studios, names taken from one’s business, and a few other similar circumstances. ↩
Idobata (井戸端) is conversation which takes place around the community well in Japanese villages, quite literally the water-cooler. ↩