If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I source my coffee, and what my ratio of grounds to water is like, and how I had a drip machine before starting pour-overs, and all that James Hoffman kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want the truth. In the first place, that stuff bores me, and in the second place, the r/coffee Reddit forum would have a hemorrhage if I spilled the real beans on my coffee-making routine. They’re nice and all—I’m not saying they’re not—but they’re also touchy as hell.
Besides, I’m not going to tell you my whole goddam biography or anything. I’ll just tell you about this madman stuff that happened to me around the start of the pandemic, just before I got pretty run-down and had to switch to decaf and take it easy.
Where I want to start is the day I began briping. I’m quite a heavy briper—that is, I used to be. The Bripe is a pipe you fill with coffee grounds and water. I really got a bang out of using that.
I was heating up my pipe with a blowtorch next to the phony café at Robarts when this guy at a table outside started giggling like a moron. That annoyed the hell out of me.
“C’mon, what is it?” I asked him. “I can enjoy coffee however I goddam want. Every Starbucks fan is strictly a phony.”
He snorted and said, “Listen. You’re wrong about hating Starbucks drinkers. Starbucks is about the seasons, the nostalgic taste of autumn in a pumpkin spice latte. It’s about taking a break with friends, writing papers at a table, and enjoying a home away from home.
“Besides, the Bripe is meme af. If you really want to make extreme coffee, try nitro coffee.”
And so, I spent more than $160 on a keg, a nitrogen tank with a regulator, and a stout faucet to infuse the nitrogen in a cold brew. It wasn’t all my fault that the tank exploded. Also, Robarts posted signs to ban briping. Now I’m in Toronto South, and they just serve decaf. All I want is a real cup of coffee.