Beer and coffee: "Write drunk, edit sober" — Ernest Hemingway.

Photo credit.

It's an old article, but a timeless one; thanks to J for the link. This is why pubs should have espresso machines.

"Beer for the idea, coffee for the execution" could be the title of my autobiography, although Biscuit's famous "What I Remember" still applies.

Drink Beer for Big Ideas, Coffee to Get Them Done, by Mikael Cho (Lifehacker)

A Creative Prescription: The Optimal Way to Drink Coffee and Beer

Both coffee and beer (in moderation) have shown to be helpful when you’re working on certain types of tasks; however, you shouldn’t drink either when you need to do detail-oriented or analytical projects like your finances. The increase in adrenaline from caffeine and the inhibition of your working memory from alcohol will make you more prone to make mistakes.

Beer For the Idea

The best time to have a beer (or two) would be when you’re searching for an initial idea. Because alcohol helps decrease your working memory (making you feel relaxed and less worried about what’s going on around you), you’ll have more brain power dedicated to making deeper connections.

Neuroscientists have studied the “eureka moment” and found that in order to produce moments of insight, you need to feel relaxed so that front brain thinking (obvious connections) can move to the back of the brain (where unique, lateral connections are made) and activate the anterior superior temporal gyrus, a small spot above your right ear responsible for moments of insight:

Researchers found that about five seconds before you have a "eureka moment" there is a large increase in alpha waves that activates the anterior superior temporal gyrus. These alpha waves are associated with relaxation—which explains why you often get ideas while you’re on a walk, in the shower, or on the toilet.

Alcohol is a substance that relaxes you, so it produces a similar effect on alpha waves and helping us reach creative insights. Coffee doesn’t necessarily help you access more creative parts of your brain like a couple pints of beer.

Coffee For the Execution

If you’ve already got an idea or an outline of where you want to go with your project, a cup of coffee would do wonders compared to having a beer to execute on your idea. The general consensus across caffeine studies is that it can increase quality and performance if the task you are doing seems easy and doesn’t require too much abstract thinking. In other words, after you have an initial idea or a plan laid out, a cup of coffee can help you execute and follow through on your concept faster without compromising quality.

Coffee grounds: Sunergos, Jesus, Yarmuth ... and Schivelbusch.

Yesterday's hyperbolic local social media culture war over Christian caffeine led me straight to one of the most influential books I've ever read, Wolfgang Schivelbusch's Tastes of Paradise: A social history of spices, stimulants and intoxicants.

In a moment, a key passage about coffee from the book. First, what the most recent fuss is all about. For the Sunergos side of the story, visit with Sara Havens here.

Dark coffee: LEO’s expulsion from Sunergos, the facts and why you should care, by Aaron Yarmuth (Louisville Ecentric Observer)

This is one of those reasons LEO was started in 1990.

On Monday, Sunergos Coffee called LEO to ask that the paper no longer be distributed at its shops. The business has since cited the “family-friendly” environment of its shops and “the increasingly sexually explicit content and advertising.” The call was made before we published our Valentine’s Day issue, featuring four recently-married couples. On the cover was a beautiful picture of one couple, two women, kissing. It embodied the story inside.

So, it is unfortunate that the shops’ customers will miss the story of these beautiful families.

LEO’s removal has sparked a public controversy on Facebook and Twitter, as people wondered whether the coffee shop was reacting to our Valentine’s Day story. This is intended to provide facts and context.

We’ve been thrown out of plenty of establishments before, and we will undoubtedly be tossed out again. But we definitely won’t stop printing stories and photographs that reflect the community, and those that provoke discussions on important issues. We also will not stop running ads from legal businesses, including those that provide adult entertainment. LEO has been running those since its first issues. In fact, LEO runs significantly fewer adult-oriented ads today than it has in the past (much to our dismay).

While we disagree and are disappointed with the coffee business’ decision, we feel it is important to defend its right to carry, or not carry, any publication it chooses. We also want to make sure that the business is not unjustly criticized for dropping us because of this issue, or the beautiful cover.

There. That’s the story ...

As an aside, Yarmuth correctly observes, complaints about LEO's adult advertising content have occurred from the start, and historically, they seem to have been equally divided between preachers and feminists. These ads are undeniably tacky, though I've never been as offended by them as those purchased by Budweiser.

On Friday, numerous individuals on social media were busy surveying the extent of Christian influence on local coffee. Had they been paying attention, it would have been recalled that not even three years ago (July 23, 2014), Gabe Bullard got there first.

How Christianity Shapes Louisville’s Coffee Culture, (WFPL-89.3)

... It may not have converted anyone, but nearly every serious coffee drinker in Louisville has been affected in some way by the actions of Christians behind the counter. Many of the early purveyors of pourover brewing, latte art and various techniques of the so-called Third Wave of coffee have been either devout Christians or employed by devout Christians. And the attraction to coffee isn’t driven by scripture. Rather, it’s scripture that inspires the quality of the drinks.

More recently, conspiracy theorists will note that Caitlin Bowling's Insider Louisville story about the advent of New Albany's new 410 Bakery (it serves Sunergos coffee, by the way) includes the owner's explanation of the name.

While 410 Bakery may seem odd for a business with the address number 140, (Emily) Butts said she came up with it because it is the address of her current Patrol Road space and also corresponds to one of her favorite Bible verses, 1 Peter 4:10: “Each of you should use whatever gift you have received to serve others, as faithful stewards of God’s grace in its various forms.”

In this long but essential excerpt from a 1997 review of the book by David Denborough (Dulwich Centre Newsletter), Schivelbusch is seen to demonstrate that the connection between Christianity (in the beginning, stemming from the Protestant Refromation) can be traced much further back in Western history than the more recent founding of Sojourn Church.

Obviously, none of these linkages have ever stopped this particular atheist from enjoying coffee, a beverage brought to Christian Europe by invading Muslim Turks.

At any rate, as you're about to see, coffee turns out to have been about sex (or its absence) all along. Take it away, David and Wolfgang.

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The birth of Puritanism

When the Reformation tried to redefine the relationship between the individual and God, it also sought to regulate the relationship between individuals and alcohol. Schivelbusch argues that these attempts were ‘laying an essential foundation in both realms for the development of capitalism’ (p.34). It was the Protestant work ethic that sought initially to alter relationships with alcohol. From that time on, attempts to work on issues of alcohol and other drug-related problems have often been influenced by the moral prescriptions of Puritanism. What do these histories mean for those of us wanting to find collaborative ways of working on such problems today?

According to Schivelbusch the social drinking habits and relationships of pre-industrial Europe were very strong and it therefore took more than Puritan ideology to condemn ‘Demon Alcohol’ (p.34). Attempts to prohibit toasting rituals repeatedly failed to achieve desired results. The way Schivelbusch describes it, alcohol consumption only dropped when broader changes occurred in the society – changes that came:

With a more highly developed society and economy … a higher degree of work discipline – and also a new group of beverages that could replace the old ones. For without substitute the existing traditions would not disappear … These requirements were fulfilled by the new hot beverages that reached Europe in the 17th Century – above all, coffee, (p.34)

Coffee

Coffee functioned as a historically significant drug. It spread through the body and achieved chemically and pharmacologically what rationalism and the Protestant ethic sought to fulfill spiritually and ideologically. With coffee, the principle of rationality entered human psychology, transforming it to conform with its own requirements. The result was a body which functioned in accord with the new demands – a rationalistic, middle-class, forward-looking body. (p.39)

Schivelbusch writes of the social meanings that are to be found in the rise in popularity of coffee as the drug of choice in 17th century. With the rise of Puritanism, coffee began to be seen as ‘awakening a drowsy humanity from its alcoholic stupor to middle-class commonsense and industry’ (p.34). Schivelbusch describes the ways in which the effects of caffeine, including the ways in which it enhances mental activity and speeds perception and judgement, make coffee ‘the beverage of the modern bourgeois age’ (p.34).

Coffee promised to lengthen and intensify the time available for work and what’s more it was seen as anti-erotic. It replaced ‘sexual arousal with stimulation of the intellect’ (p.37). This combination, according to Schivelbusch, made coffee the ideal Puritan drink: ‘Coffee as the beverage of sobriety and coffee as the means of curbing the sexual urges, it is not hard to recognise the ideological forces behind this reorientation’ (p.37). There developed a moral imperative, in the minds of some, to drink coffee rather than alcohol.

Schivelbusch also briefly touches upon how coffee houses became centres for communication, and how these centres were often exclusively male. He describes how the increasing use of coffee and the exclusion of women was protested:

In 1764 a broadside caused a great sensation in London. Its title: ‘The Women’s Petition Against Coffee.’ … The text expressed in no uncertain terms the fear that coffee would make ‘men [as] unfruitful as those deserts whence that unhappy berry is said to be brought’. It is easy to identify the sociopolitical impulse behind this complaint: the English coffeehouses of this period excluded women, and in their pamphlet the women were rebelling against the increasing patriarchalisation of society. That this opposition should use the argument that coffee makes men impotent shows, on the one hand how powerful this notion was at the time, and on the other, how unpuritannical, indeed how anti-puritannical, the women of this time were, (p.37)

Must reading: "How Christianity Shapes Louisville's Coffee Culture," by Gabe Bullard.

Ever wonder why "Louisville's coffee scene has an undeniable undercurrent of Christianity that isn’t the case nationally"?

Gabe Bullard explains, in depth. While reading, I was reminded of various other implications of coffee, and Wolfgang Schivelbusch's thoughts on the matter in his book, Tastes of Paradise, as summarized in this e-notes excerpt.

Called “the Great Soberer,” coffee became a symbol of the emerging bourgeoisie, who were delighted by its stimulating effects. Conservatives blamed it for the deterioration of society and said it was dangerous.

Coffee came to Europe from the Arab world, and initially was known as the "wine of Islam." The simple observation that a caffeinated beverage differs from an alcoholic one suffices to explain how coffee became an instrument to advance tee-totalling, as opposed to intoxication -- not necessarily from religious motivations, but because sober workers would produce greater profits than drunk workers.

Obviously, these are not Bullard's considerations. Rather, he contributes substance to clarify innuendo, and as a coffee drinker and frequent patron of the Quills branch in New Albany, I appreciate the effort. I'm a pagan, fanatical, unbelieving atheistic threat to the established order ... and I've always felt welcome at Quills. This is as it should be.

How Christianity Shapes Louisville's Coffee Culture, by Gabe Bullard (WFPL)

... It’s unlikely the third wave of coffee would have skipped Louisville. Had Sunergos and Quills not brought it here, someone would have. Just like with Heine Brothers. Had Mays not brought better coffee to Louisville in 1994, Starbucks would have in 1999. But the market is driven by those who act first and act well. In the case of Louisville, with third wave coffee, it was devout Christians, driven by an interest in coffee and mandated by their faith to work as hard as possible.

On sweat equity and indie business upward striving.

Looking over my notes these past few weeks, I detect a pattern. It might embrace those wishing to be a rock and roll star chef.

Chef Mark Mendez: Open letter to a culinary student

In beer terms ...

So You Think You Want to Open a Brewery

Gary Humphrey might chime in from the basement of RCW:

Opinion: Wanna Start a Winery? Get Ready to Sweat

And then there's Nathan and the folks behind Quills.

Living The Coffee Shop Dream

The common themes are steep learning curves and plain hard work, as exist somewhere off to the side of the red carpet. The encouraging part is that when they're present and clicking, as with restaurants, a brewery, a winery and a coffee roaster in downtown New Albany, there's the chance (just a chance, not a certainty) of getting somewhere ... of making it happen.

I was having an e-mail conversation with an old friend, who wrote something striking about the typical disconnect between local government and the indie grassroots.

The only way it stops if for a new nonprofit is organized by the community's business owners and that group begins exercising its political power. No city money, no city representation, just business persons at the local level. It would take years to start up and I doubt that it would actually function in NA but that's the only way I see anything working to the advantage of the business community.

We're working on it.

What these various restaurant, brewery, winery and coffee people (me included) are coming to realize is that starting a non-profit in this fashion takes the same learning curve and work ethic as getting their own businesses off the ground. We don't have a lot of spare time, but we can do it. And we are.