Black, No Sugar
If you’re anything like me, you have days in which, on things you’ve seen a million times, you suddenly notice something you’ve never noticed before. So it was that Saturday morning, I reached for the box of Melitta Coffee filters for which I reach every day, more than once on most days. The word, German, seemed to jump off the box at me. And I read this:
In 1908, a German homemaker, Melitta Bentz, made history when she invented the coffee filter. Tired of drinking bitter coffee, she poked holes in the bottom of a brass cup and lined it with a sheet of her son’s blotting paper. The result … rich, flavorful coffee without bitterness or mess.
After I read that, Anne came into the kitchen. I was still standing by the cupboard from which I’d retrieved the coffee filters, box in hand, with this look on my face:
Needless to say, Anne’s seen that thousand-yard look before.
“Uh oh. What are you thinking about now?” she asked.
Snapping out of my reverie, I said, “How do you think a German woman knew, a hundred-and-sixteen years ago, that if she poked holes in one of her husband’s brass cups, stole a piece of her son’s blotting paper, lined the cup with the paper, filled the cup with ground coffee, and poured hot water over it, the coffee would be less bitter?”
“I have no idea,” Anne said.
I went on: “How did she poke holes in her husband’s brass cup? Did she use a drill? Was it his drill? Did he get angry that his perfectly good brass cup was now perforated? Did she put his tools back where they belonged? And what about her son? Was he sore that some of his blotting paper was swiped by his mom for a beverage experiment?”
“I really don’t know,” Anne said, a hint of impatience creeping into her voice.
“Do you think anybody got poisoned? What if the filter didn’t prevent copper or zinc from the brass from leaching into the coffee? And what if there was aluminum or nickel in the alloy or the plating? If Melitta had put baking flour into the cup with the blotting paper and poured water over that, do you think it would have filtered out the glutens?”
“Mark.”
“Yes,” I said.
“Are you ever going to make the coffee?”
Ouch! Well … ya can’t hate a guy for being curious.
P.S. For those of you who doubt the veracity of Melitta’s story, here ya go. And for those of you who wonder at the cause of my airheadedness, blame it on Melitta.
Originally Published on https://www.bizcatalyst360.com/category/lifecolumns/notes-to-self/
