If you wander into one of the boutique coffee shops in Brooklyn, you’ll likely find “single origin” offerings. These are coffees grown and harvested in one place, and roasted and brewed without the addition of beans from different coffee farms. Often, these derive from the mountainous regions of places like Honduras, Colombia, or Tanzania. But, in delving into the history of the drink, coffee professional turned restaurant manager, Mika Turbo, makes one thing clear: all coffee has a single origin–that is Ethiopia. Coffee, Turbo stresses, is black culture and black history.
Turbo is telling me the story of coffee, and explaining how the beverage caught their interest. We chat over a couple of beers because the coffee shops have all closed. It is hard to get a coffee with an industry insider, after all they are the ones who facilitate the coffee shop meetings the rest of us rely on.
The story of coffee enters the Eurocentric world when humans are pillaged from the Horn of Africa in Europe’s slave trade. Enslaved peoples carried their cultural knowledge of the plant, its cultivation, and its processing to the European world. Ethiopia is the homeland of coffee and ancestral coffee knowledge, even today, their heirloom plants are the best in the world.
That’s where coffee begins, Turbo explains. But the coffee shops we know today rely on a certain degree of Italian innovation. As the Italians entered their industrial revolution, they needed quick coffee, motivation for labor, and a functional work beverage. Out of this, Italian espresso is born. Turbo calls the original espresso an “old world style,” with a hotter pour that quickly extracts flavor and caffeine from roasted beans. American coffee shops today focus on lighter roasts and lower temperature extractions–drawing out the acidic and floral flavors that accentuate the idiosyncrasies of single origin pours.
The origins of Turbo’s coffee story, on the other hand, date back to when he was three years old on the bus sipping hot coffee with their mother to stay warm. Professionally, they have worked in coffee for 15 years in the capacity of barista, café manager, green coffee technician, and restaurant manager. To top it off, Turbo has been a US Coffee Championship National Finalist. In short, he is an industry veteran with expertise from roasting to brewing. Professional motivation? Turbo explains, “When I started, I wanted to make something for myself that tasted good.”
At this point, Turbo’s investment into the coffee world is beyond just work and taste. The black drink has manifested black ink. He has coffee trade tattoos sleeving their right arm: a French press, a roaster, an espresso portafilter. A doctor even mentioned that Turbo might be allergic to coffee. Their response: “I’ll have a red face for the rest of my life.”
Devotion to a profession and to a beverage. Why? In coffee, Turbo sees hard work, community, and hospitality.
First and foremost, coffee is a livelihood for many. They stress the invisible business costs that coffee farms in distant countries incur. The price of coffee, in his opinion, should reflect the hard labor, land ownership, and hand sorting that occur far outside of the consumer facing coffee shop. The barista, too, ekes by on an hourly wage and tips that many customers don’t feel they should pay. Turbo enlightens me. In New York City, apparently, a barista can make a quick buck attending events called “Latte Throwdowns” nearly every other week. If you are a virtuoso in latte art, the prizes can supplement an income and facilitate further training.
But how do we show the hard work that goes into coffee? Turbo knows its part of the job: “Taking it, honoring it, and putting it in a beverage that does it justice.” Part of this process is presentation and hospitality. Pouring a coffee while engaging with a customer and telling the story of that cup: the bean, the roast, the brew.
Events like Latte Art Throwdowns are part of the wider coffee community into which Turbo has been initiated. Coffee lovers and coffee makers. They recall the pandemic lockdowns and the difficulty of re-opening coffee shops safely. Turbo explains how hospitality and community can lead to a mental shift for customers. When you know their order, he tells me, the customer thinks, “‘You actually know me, so I want to get to know you.’ You are no longer just a vehicle to shove caffeine into the customer’s body.” At this point, coffee transcends its physical bounds and becomes a sense of connection between people.
And hospitality in coffee is an art–one that you can compete in. Turbo has participated in the U.S. Coffee Championship in the Coffee and Good Spirits Category. In other words, they are an expert in coffee cocktails. Why the coffee cocktail? Turbo answers, “You need something to give you a buzz that’s not a Vodka Redbull. It’s fun. It tastes good. There’s a show involved.” Given the popularity of the espresso martini, this category is intriguing, but Turbo tells me that his focus is on making coffee cocktails that are not brown and can taste good when served hot. I, for one, have no idea how to make coffee another color.
The competition has rigid rules on presentation and process. Competitors only have 10 minutes to convert whole bean roasted coffee into a finished beverage. Apparently not challenging enough, spills and drips out of the cup or into the tray count as deductions. Performance is as important as percolation. Competitors must carry themselves professionally, deliver tasting notes to the judge panel, and innovate on the category. Two cocktails must be made, and one must be an Irish Coffee.
The performance is part of what attracts Turbo to the cocktail competition. The beverage, even in its pure form, has a story (remember Ethiopia?), but a coffee cocktail can say so much more. They tell me that their signature is called My Parents’ Divorce. It’s an original cocktail that blends orange and rosemary infused mezcal, cranberry simple syrup, and a hot French press of coffee hand roasted by Samantha Padillo. To garnish, a sprig of rosemary. Sure, the rosemary might be prickly, but that’s part of the story that the drink tells. My Parents’ Divorce is the bittersweet taste of a family getting back together for Thanksgiving. Turbo believes in the power of the drink.
This is coffee, a drink I often consume black. But Turbo brings the meaning of the drink alive, even in its most basic form. From Ethiopia, to the US Coffee Competition’s stage, coffee, in Turbo’s view, is more than just “hot diarrhea in a cup.” (I am told to imagine the sound of an instant coffee machine sputtering out the last bitter drops.) Instead, it is a career, a community, and a challenge to invite others into our lives–all in a cup.
To read more about Mika Turbo’s coffee experience, see https://www.baristamagazine.com/maintaining-a-coffee-community-during-covid-19/ or follow them on Instagram @rawkalways.
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