AeroPress Sabotage

Like the humanitarians, the safari-bound, and the missionaries, coffee professionals also pack their Africa bags with usual culprits.

The seasoned Africa-bound will even have a special toiletries bag they stash away and pull out just for these Africa trips. Toiletry bags containing antimalarials, Imodium, mosquito repellent, hand sanitizer and baby wipes.

But what sets the coffee professional’s luggage apart from every other Africa-bound traveler is the coffee kit. Knowing they are headed into malarial-mosquito-infested and good-coffee-devoid terrain, the coffee professional has been known to pack their own hand grinder, set of kitchen scales, and AeroPress – or even a French Press or a Pour-over filter.

There’s something pretentious about bringing your own coffee brew set-up into an establishment. There’s also something possibly essential and revolutionary about it. For some, it may actually be essential to start the day with good coffee in order to function.

To me, also a contented tea and hot chocolate drinker, I am sufficiently fueled by the vision to change the coffee drinking culture in the coffee producing countries of East Africa. What becomes essential is not my consumption of palatable coffee every morning, but the revolutionary potential of introducing unassuming locals to what grows in their midst and what it can taste like if prepared differently.

So it is with a strange mix of emotion – some embarrassment, some revolt-induced exhilaration, some gleeful anticipation – that I bring my AeroPress into the hotel restaurant at breakfast time. I carefully pull out one piece of equipment at a time, testing the waters of the wait staff. It’s not much different than pulling out my own toaster or packed lunch and so I approach the process with a degree of humility and indebtedness to my hosts.

Our coffee won’t be possible without the generosity and curiosity of our waiters. I ask if I may have a teapot of hot water. Without fail they all graciously obliged. And then, without fail, each hovered around in the background to witness the science experiment until I invited them into the fun.

By our final morning in Uganda I think back to our first morning at the Mount Elgon Hotel – the day we had still endeavored to engage with the local coffee at breakfast – perhaps too bashful to bust out our own coffee and gear. We experienced horrific coffee – only made worse by milk – and our taste buds only received mercy from the fresh fruit so delicious you could eat it all day.

Later that first day we were offered instant coffee that Abe had no qualms about degrading in front of our hosts – who agreed with Abe’s verdict with a hint of embarrassment. With beautiful American honesty and directness, Abe calls a spade a spade – not attempting to mask his opinion that it’s ludicrous to drink bad coffee in a country that produces both fine Robusta and Arabica coffees.

The next morning we don’t risk the hotel coffee but instead, team up to make our own. Abe brings the Coexist Peacemaker roast while I bring the AeroPress, grinder, and scales. Agnes indulges our need for good coffee by supplying the teapots of hot water, then lingers around until we invite her over to taste the brew. She agrees without hesitation that it is indeed much better than the metallic, charred, watery cup that sits in front of Abe.

The following morning we gather a wider audience at the hotel restaurant as we brew our AeroPresses. Abe once again has no qualms about advertising good (Coexist) Ugandan coffee to the hotel manager. He holds the bag up to him like Vanna White with her hands framing the lovely prize, and answers unapologetically that ‘no, the hotel coffee does not taste good.’ We marvel at how the hotel lobby has a floor to ceiling glass vitrine display of Ugandan coffee masquerading as some specialty roast.

Our job in converting Mbale to good coffee done for the week, we head back to Kampala, over the source of the White Nile River, past marshy lowlands and through lush forest.

We check in to Kampala’s oldest hotel, a grand colonial construction with horrendous oil paintings adorning the ornate walls – depicting white-haired European men and their African slaves carrying vast quantities of cargo behind them up uncharted territories. The place is now run by Indians in a bizarre ex-colonial ironic twist of fate.

Beside the breakfast buffet, we introduce Jimmy of the Speke Hotel wait staff to the AeroPress. Conscientious of his call to professionalism he declines the offer of a taste of the Coexist Ugandan AeroPress – then changes his mind and asks us to pour him a cup and leave it on a tray he then sneaks back into the kitchen to taste in private.

He returns a minute later with a shy smile and a conspiratorial tone to tell us that the coffee was really good. He’s come back to offer us more hot water for our next batch of AeroPress. JB and Juma appear with Isaac and join our breakfast party. As breakfast turns to brunch, we churn out the AeroPresses as we go over final business matters before we all part ways at midday.

JB admires the AeroPress and declares that he would like to purchase 10 of them for his new café he plans to open in Mbale within the year. I explain to him that 5 AeroPresses should be more than enough given that he can only actually prepare two at the same time – if he is practiced – or unless he hires 10 AeroPress baristas to assist him.

As I get ready to make my way back to London, and as Abe heads back to the United States, I glance up at the horrendous colonial oil painting and muse on whether our AeroPress invasion qualifies as culinary colonization. Or perhaps – and less offensively – it’s more akin to what happened over the last several decades from the West to the East Coast as Pete’s and Starbucks pushed out the Folgers era and gave way to the Third Wave of specialty coffee.

I stay my last night in Uganda with Kenyan colleague Mbula. I witness her making about 8 different cups of coffee as a means of procrastinating and dealing with her own work stress.

I smile at how this world barista sensory judge is frothing milk on a renegade milk frother named Mr. Cuppaccino – preparing her coffee without the universally pretentious timers and scales or precision grinders. The coffees at hand are among the best I’ve laid hands on in a long time. And despite the almost haphazard methods – due to the fact that this girl understands coffee better than most and knows where the line is between pretension and quality – we enjoy some of the best coffee I’ve had all week.

As I board my flight back to Nairobi the next afternoon I speculate on how long it will be before the only good coffee in town won’t come from my AeroPress or Mbula’s kitchen. As I wait for my connection back to London in Jomo Kenyatta airport I remember JB’s plans to acquire 10 AeroPresses.

Next trip I’ll pack 10 Aeropresses alongside my antimalarials and Imodium (for the bad coffee) and that’ll be the last time. Maybe then I can leave my AeroPress at home as I pay JB a visit in his new café.