Tempering: the Coffee Life of World Champion Wu Zelin (1)

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He spent eight years

Make a cup of coffee that moves the world!

Dream of departure, my coffee dream is brewing

In the eighth year of ○○, Chee and I went to the WBC World Coffee Competition in Copenhagen to cheer for our friends and saw experts from all over the world. To be able to see with my own eyes these star baristas who could only "read" on the Internet or forums abroad in the past, I was greatly shocked, and I felt like a dream. The world-class competition is completely different from the national competition, and the brilliance and compact rhythm of the overall competition are indescribable!

Is it caffeine? When the star barista walked past me, I found a halo on their heads and pink bubbles around them. I feel like my whole body cells are trembling and tears are coming out!

"I'm going to take part in the WBC World Coffee Competition! One day, I will stand on that stage with them! "

With that, Chee looked at me steadily, and three words appeared on her face: "No, yes, please!"

Because of this impulse, this vision, began a seven-year journey to conquer the coffee championship. And it also takes me and Chee into another stage of life, which is an unexpected and rich journey!

The incubation period of symptoms

When I was in my third year of high school, when coffee chains were becoming more and more popular, Starbucks Coffee opened five stores all over Taiwan, and I often went there for dates or K-books. The rise of chain coffee shops has not only impacted traditional coffee shops and made coffee culture popular rapidly, but also completely changed the food culture of Taiwanese. This is my first close contact with coffee, in fact, in retrospect, I had to work hard to make up the clip. At that time, I really had no special feeling for coffee, but I never thought that my future life would be inseparable from it.

But then again, when I was in the Electrical Department of Central University, there were few coffee shops near the school, but there were coffee bugs hidden in my heart. I wanted to drink coffee in my spare time, and I was curious about making coffee. So I bought the first coffee pot in my life, which was a cheap and simple French filter pot and started my coffee life. There is no doubt that the first cup of coffee I made for myself was in that smelly and dirty boy's dormitory. It's incredible to think about it now, but it's really happening in my life.

Every morning I am the first to get up and make coffee, and the extra cup of coffee from the filter pot is reserved for my early roommate. In the boys' dormitory, I think it belongs to our "excellent flavor"! Later, drinking coffee can no longer satisfy me, I not only want to drink coffee, but also want to drink "good coffee"! I don't know if it's because of my personality or the training of the science department. I think over and over again: why doesn't my coffee taste good? Why do I make different kinds of coffee every day? So seriously climb on BBS, find forums, read related articles, literature, want to know more ways to brew coffee.

Find coffee, find a life partner.

At that time, there was a small coffee shop in the Central College of Arts, which was a coffee mecca for students. Because Chee loved coffee, we used to stay in a small coffee shop, enjoying the so-called "boutique coffee" and commenting on the coffee. Chee and coffee and I have become a "golden iron triangle", both of which are indispensable. To this day, our greatest pleasure is still looking for coffee shops everywhere, drinking coffee and tasting coffee together. Even if we have children, we continue to run cafes with doll carts.

Coffee can be said to be full of memories of our college days, and Chee and I ranked first in the aftertaste list, which is Irish coffee. At that time, it happened to be in the same world as the Internet novel riffraff Cai's Irish Coffee, and the stewardess and Irish coffee became our after-dinner topic, so we decided to have a drink. At that time, I found a coffee shop in downtown Chungli that claimed to have Irish coffee, and immediately rushed to drink it with Chee. Along the way, I was full of wine and coffee. I keep fantasizing about the wonderful taste of "wine and coffee".

The shop is a warm family style, the landlady seems to be very warm, or poor students, we decided to share a cup, the landlady also served Irish coffee, she poured whisky, then lit, the blue flame homeopathic, like a voluptuous magic show, Chee and I can not help but admire!

Years later, the daughter of the landlady accidentally saw our article at that time and showed it to her mother. Our daughter wrote to recognize us and told us that the landlady later went out of business and moved abroad. Although she had no choice but to close the shop, she was very moved that someone on the Internet remembered her shop.

This letter reminds me not to forget the "original heart" that loves coffee.

Between calmness and enthusiasm of science men

Chee and I study coffee as a subject and always crawl on BBS very seriously. Later, I served as the moderator of the central Totoro station and the PTT coffee section of National Taiwan University. When I was frantically studying coffee, I had a persistence that "if you want to do good work, you must sharpen its tools first." I desperately surf the Internet to explore more instruments for making coffee. As long as I find that there are second-hand coffee pots for sale, I want to buy them and try them. For example, after someone modified the coffee machine and found that it didn't work well, I took over and tried it. I bought hand flushing, French pressure, Saifeng kettle, household Italian coffee maker, and so on.

At that time, there were many online discussion areas, such as PTT, Bella, Huangding Strange Hall and Osher Coffee discussion area, and there were often coffee parties, so they became friends with many coffee players. Chee and I met Ray, a young man who works in the church at the coffee forum in BBS. At the forum, he invited everyone to eat and drink in the church, selflessly offering food and space. There were delicious food and delicious coffee at that party, so that when we first entered the church, we had an unprecedented experience and enjoyed the wonderful time of "good things to be shared with good friends".

I used to think that the people who linger on BBS were college students, but at that party, Chee and I met coffee lovers in various industries, even people we never knew or understood. Coffee played a different role in each of their lives, and it also ignited the spark of meeting. Once I made an appointment with a netizen to deliver coffee equipment, and I was surprised and delighted to find that it was Li Zhenya Jerome, a teacher in the English department of Chee. Unexpectedly, the teacher, who is serious in class on weekdays, is an enthusiastic "coffee is good" on the Internet. Thanks to the seeds spread by coffee, the distance between us is so close!

This is the prelude to my coffee life, which adds a lot of color to my later days. @ # (not finished, to be continued)

── (excerpt from "tempering: the Coffee Life of World Champion Wu Zelin" / Crown Culture)