Hound Dog & Bean by B.G. Thomas

Author:B.G. Thomas [Thomas, B.G.]
Language: eng
Format: epub

CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE

H.D. WIGGLED down in his chair, wine in hand, and got comfortable. Watching Bean was amusing. But in a cool way, not silly. Who even knew about the stuff Bean was talking about? H.D. sure didn’t, and for some reason, he found he was interested.

“The First Wave people spread coffee around the world,” Bean said. “They were the men who wound up making it commonplace and took away any nuance there was to coffee. I won’t even go into the dreaded freeze-dried crap. Oh, yes I will. The inventor of instant coffee should be flogged.”

“Unless he liked it,” H.D. added.

“Exactly!” Bean sighed, shrugged, and went on. “Then the Second Wave started the spread of better coffee. They began the whole specialty coffee movement. Coffee grown in different places in the world has unique flavors, just like wine. I try and tell my mother about that. She is insane for wine. If only she knew. There are so many subtleties and layers to coffee. And there’s the whole thing about original Arabica beans versus the poorer quality Robusta beans….”

“The difference being?” H.D. had no clue what Bean was talking about. Coffee had always been what woke him up in the morning, or if need be, kept him awake when he needed to stay up late. Not to forget sobering him up after drinking too many cocktails. He didn’t even particularly like the stuff—thus why he’d always added so much cream and sugar. At least until Elaine had started buying the stuff from Bean’s store. Who knew the dark brew could be so good? He found himself genuinely interested in what the sexy man across the table was telling him.

Bean looked at him again. “You are sure you want to hear this?” the look said.

“Keep going.”

Bean nodded. “Okay,” he continued. “Arabica beans are the real coffee. The beans discovered over a thousand years ago in Ethiopia. Then Robusta was discovered and…. Well, it was a sad day as far as I’m concerned. Robusta trees yield a greater crop and have a lot more caffeine. Bugs don’t like it, which helps with the yield. But it isn’t very good and…. Okay. I’ll stop on that subject. It’s Third Wave you were asking me about. See what you started?”

H.D. couldn’t help but grin. If Bean were half as passionate in bed as he was about coffee, then they could have a lot of fun.

“Third Wavers aren’t afraid to travel. We go to where the coffee is. Walking and hefting our backpacks and sleeping in hammocks if we have to. Third Wave is where taste is the most important thing. We don’t care what the bean costs. We will pay whatever we have to pay to make the very, very best coffee we can. For instance? We just started carrying Haraaz Red Marqaha from Yemen this week. Expensive? You bet. But what we’re paying for is to get the farmer to do a lot of extra work. The coffee is fripping fantastic, and we want as much as we can get.

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