I am not a morning person. For most of my life I’ve leapt out of bed with just enough time to throw on some clothes, run a brush through my hair, and grab a toaster pastry or a bowl of cereal before heading out the door. Savoring a mug of freshly-brewed coffee isn’t in the cards, so I never developed the habit of most Americans to start the day with a cup of joe. I acquired a taste for afternoon tea instead and almost took pride in the fact that I drank coffee only a few times a year.

A while ago, I started seeing bottles of cold-brewed coffee on the shelves of various local markets. The idea of simply adding hot water to a ready-made concentrate appealed to me, so I decided to try it out and found that I enjoyed having a cup of coffee with my croissant on the weekends. Using the concentrate, I began to drink coffee more and more frequently, although not enough to become addicted (unlike my co-swooner, whose sunny personality has been known to turn dark when her caffeine fix is not delivered in a timely manner).

One day, when I’d run out of cold-brewed coffee and hadn’t yet been to the store to buy another bottle, I saw an open bag of Maui Mokka coffee in my mother’s refrigerator, which she’d brought back from a recent trip to Hawaii. The bag was full and it smelled divine, so I decided to appropriate a small amount to hold me until I could buy more concentrate. Having only tea accoutrements, I put the coffee in a pot with hot water and let it sit for a few minutes before pouring the brew through a fine mesh strainer. Delicious!

When I ran out, I pilfered more coffee from the green bag in my mother’s fridge. I figured she wouldn’t notice such small amounts, but this went on for more than two months. On the day I realized that there were only a couple of scoops left in the bag, I knew the jig was up. Innocently, I asked her, “How attached are you to this Maui Mokka coffee?” This is my sly way of saying I want something (i.e., “How attached are you to this cookie?” “How attached are you to the rest of these potato chips?”), and the response is, invariably, “Oh, you can have it.” So I was dismayed when she said, “I’m saving it for when Sophia arrives [her friend who was soon to visit from Greece].” Damn.

I had to come clean. She was none too happy, so I offered to buy another bag online. In doing so, I discovered that MauiGrown Coffee refers to their Mokka variety as “our Champagne of coffee”—and that it was going to cost me more than $40 to have a bag shipped from Hawaii. Crime doesn’t pay, but I did!

Since then, I’ve had to drink other brands, but—though I’m by no means a connoisseur—I haven’t liked any coffee as well as the Maui Mokka. And, although my mother often drinks decaf, I suspect that she asked me to order the decaffeinated version for her because she knew I wouldn’t touch it. So I got the decaf and she got the last laugh. Alo-ha!

Stuff Worthy Of Our Notice™ in this post:

Maui Mokka Coffee

 

Maui Mokka coffee can be obtained by ordering from the MauiGrown Coffee website or by hopping on a plane to Hawaii. I recommend the latter.