It is early afternoon on a Thursday when my good friend Igor says “Let’s have a coffee” with the same inflection as Marcus Mumford says “Let’s have a dance.” The invitation is irresistible. We walk the cobbled streets back to his apartment, affectionately named as The Chill Zone, and Igor begins the ritual of brewing two cups of coffee.
He fills a gooseneck kettle with water from the tap, puts on the lid, and starts the flame of his gas stove. It takes three clicks for the flame to catch, just enough to put a trace of sulfur into the kitchen. The afternoon sun radiates from the hard-wood floors and seagulls fly past the towering windows. We are on the third floor, the penthouse, of an old building in downtown Portland, Maine. The view is rooftops and Portland Harbor.
Igor removes a box of filters from a cabinet, unfolds one, and places it in the classic Chemex glass coffee maker. The water is beginning to steam as he puts a few drops into the filter, soaking it ever so slightly. Immediately he dumps the contents and leans over the stove checking the thermometer on the kettle. Six large tablespoons of freshly ground coffee make their way into the filter. One more splash of hot water to open the grounds, a bit of a tease before the main event. Finally a generous pour, a pause, and the trickle starts. This continues until all the kettle is empty and the carafe is full.
“It’s fun, you know?!” as he catches my stare, I am admittedly bewildered by the process. He fills two small hand-made stone cups with coffee, pushes one to me and simply says “Drink it black, you’ll love it.” Skeptically I sample, and he is right. The aroma, the natural sweetness, the smoothness of this coffee is exceptional.
A few days later, at home, I begin to assemble my own pour-over-coffee rig. For me the process is likely similar to every other Millennial: pour two fingers of mid-range scotch, Glenfiddich 14-year, fetch the iPad, and open the one app that guarantees that my quest will end in two days when a brown box arrives on the doorstep.
This is where things seem to go awry. Although choosing a glass coffee maker proved quite simple, the gooseneck kettle did not. The search results show a number of products, all curiously priced at around $40, with unusually lengthy descriptions highlighting the engineering, design, and usage. There is one that promises “military-grade” while several others “surgical grade” steel. The “military-grade” steel kettle captures my eye. The man behind this extraordinary kettle travelled to Colombia and discovered ancient methods of brewing coffee before being inspired to share his experience with the rest of the world in the form of an exceptional gooseneck coffee kettle. There are many more, all seemingly with similar designs and all made from the finest steel in China.
As I turn to blogs, reviews, and even some regretful parts of the internet two weeks go by. The quest to find a kettle begins to boil away my spare time. It becomes an obsession to find a kettle that is priced more fairly or one that is sourced less suspiciously. Although I am not a metallurgy expert I know enough: there is no such thing as military-grade steel and surgical steel has no place in kitchen equipment. Surely, all of these must be the typical 304 grade stainless steel, and surely many are sourced through a well-known Chinese product wholesaler.
There appears to be a well-developed sales pitch aimed at hitting an emotional high-note everywhere I look — for a kettle. A pitch that is not limited to the information page about these products, but intertwined in the questions, the immediate reviews, and then spills to blog posts, videos, and social media posts throughout the internet. I began questioning my own sanity as I read each one with a greater degree of suspicion than the last. Repeatedly I see the same patterns of comparison, the same feature highlights, the same verdicts.
Frustrated and exhausted I reach out to a friend in Germany, surely they are known for their steel products there, perhaps he has seen similar kettles. A few days later a response comes back: they do not use kettles. Turns out they have piping hot water straight from the tap. With renewed determination I e-mail a friend on Tokyo and check the clock — still early. A few hours go by and she responds with “はい”. She proceeds to enlighten me with choices ranging from those in a ¥100 shop to those found in cafes. In the process my suspicions are confirmed, there is good kettles out there, but the $40 ones sold are likely junk.
At this point nearly a month has gone by and I convinced myself that the Great Gooseneck Kettle Cabal is real. Armed with information and suffering from obsessions I nearly commit to a $70 kettle, but one made in Japan, through a website I have not used before. Moments before completing the order I pause to check the reputation of this online establishment — it only takes seconds to recognize this is a mistake. It turns out that this particular merchant has a reputation for rebranding products. However, this leads me down a short path to discovery. Eureka! Two days later a Japanese made goose neck kettle arrives in a brown box.
This goose chase for a gooseneck coffee kettle was eye opening. The following morning I followed the ritual that Igor taught me and made the most satisfying cup. A moment of reflection juxtaposed personal satisfaction with angst as I realized how much effort a few companies made to sell this one kitchen item that no one needs and everyone should have. Despite all this, or possibly because of it, I am content with this addition to my kitchen, and I did it only for $40.
