The Last Bean In The Bag

I’ve never given much thought to the last bean in the bag.  I think that’s because I don’t recall leaving one bean in the bag.  That is, until this morning.

I was grinding up some of my favorite beans from the last week and when I got ready to throw the bag in the recycle, I realized that there was one bean left.  I don’t know if it was because I wasn’t fully awake or what, but I couldn’t get the bean out of the bag.  Now, normally I would have tossed the bag with that one bean in there.  I mean how much difference could one coffee bean make in the bigger scheme of the pot of coffee?

Well, to be honest, this was some fairly expensive coffee and quite good, I might add, so I thought, “why take a chance on lessening my enjoyment of this last pot by not making a good effort to remove the last bean from the bag?"

And so, I did.  After dropping that very last bean in the grinder, I stopped and smiled and thought to myself, “What if one little bean does make a difference?”  I think there’s a deeper story here and it probably goes all the way back to the farm where the coffee was grown to the person who picked the bean to the roaster who roasted the coffee to the barista who weighed it up for me.

And if we view every pot of coffee by each single bean, we might be on to the key to better brewing or more enjoyment or at least appreciation of every last bean.