Pot Coffee

A story about cutting trees, thick coffee, and love in Finland.

Hi Friends,

This week I want to share a little story from my life in Finland with you.

As always thank you so much for reading.

Best,

Wil

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When I first arrived in Finland, I accidentally spent a day working as a tree surgeon.

This was years ago now, back when I was enrolled on an 8-month “integration course” for immigrants. Though much of the course took the form of classroom-based language lessons, we were also sent out on a 2-month work placement for us to practice our latent language skills in the “real world”.

As many of you know, my work life has taken in everything from London marketing agencies to Stockholm Michelin star kitchens. But, I can tell you, the best job I’ve ever had is that 2-months work experience at the local museum in a small Finnish town called Pori.

I spent my days reading, learning about Finnish folklore and mythology, I even found myself at an archeological dig one week. I suppose this is why, despite being deeply selfish, hate-filled and lazy by nature, I happily obliged when the museum director asked for help trimming an apple tree at a separate, much smaller, museum on the other side of town.

It felt like the least I could do. And how hard could trimming a bush really be?

A day later and the modest bush I was anticipating turned out to be more along the lines of a fucking arboretum. And I say arboretum because that’s what the two 15-foot apple trees I was faced with may have been for all the good I felt I could do for them.

I was greeted that day by a woman called Tuulikki, the curator of the museum. Her hair was silver and pixie-cut short and her bright orange jacket and blue shoes made her look like something from a Moomin novel. As we looked to the trees in a shared silence I was begging to be broken by laughter, as though this was all a joke being played on me, she handed me what I can only describe as garden shears for a fairy tale giant.

“I’m not a tall man, you know,” I told Tuulikki.

“It’s good, it’s good,” she said, the words emerging from the side of her mouth. “We do what we can.”

I’d never heard a “we” more clearly signify “you” before.

She looked toward the sky. It was the colour of cigarette ash floating in an ash tray left out in the rain. “I hope the rain doesn’t come,” she said. I think I managed a grunt in reply.

With that, she left me to my task.

An hour and much swearing later, a younger man exited one of the museum buildings and came over to where I was intricately massacring the beautiful apple trees. His trousers were smeared with paint and his hands stained brown with what was likely furniture polish. He had a brown mullet and I admired him for it.

“Moi,” he said. The look in his eye was one of secret confidence that I didn’t know what I was doing.

I put the mega-shears to my side. “Moi,” I said in a tone identical to the one my son now uses to confirm he has, indeed, soiled himself.

“Haluatko kahvia?” he asked. I told him yes. Yes, I would like coffee. I walked down my ladder, which was really only a step, and we headed inside.

The small museum wasn’t really a museum as you might think of one at all. It consisted of four beautifully maintained residential buildings from around the turn of the 20th century. Inside each, everything was the way it would have been over a hundred years ago. And that was the entire point of the place. It served as an education centre for those who wanted to find out how to renovate their own homes to these traditional Finnish standards as well. And the thing that was special about the place was that it wasn’t all that special at all. These wooden, humble yet beautiful buildings were the same as those dotted throughout Pori, the town I lived in at the time in south-west Finland.

As the man and I walked toward one of the buildings he turned and introduced himself as Kalle. I followed him in and took off the jacket Tuulikki had loaned me. Stained green with the filth from the tree bark. The same colour as my hands.

The kitchen, unsurprisingly, was like something out of a museum. There was a small cast-iron cooking stove. Black pots and pans hung from hooks above it on the brown-tiled wall. Sat around a small wooden table were Tuulikki and Kalle. On the counter opposite the stove a worn and dented steel kettle rattled on an electric hotplate. This modern device looked as out of place as I felt. Tuulikki placed her hands on the table and pushed herself up to stand. Her face screwed with the effort, as though eating sour lemons. She took the kettle in her hand and it shook as she brought it to the cork mat on the table. Over it she draped a brown woolly tea cosy. I was waiting for someone to bring out the instant coffee or tea bags or anything when Tuulikki put her hand on the kettle.

“Have you had this kind of coffee before?”

“What kind of coffee is that?”

“Pannukahvia. Pot coffee. It’s how we made coffee a long time ago. When nobody had money.” She smiled at me. “The coffee is boiled in kettle, makes it go further.”

“That’s different,” I said.

“We just need to wait for it a while. So the grinds can sink to the bottom.”

Tuulikki sat down. Kalle said something that barely registered as more than a breath to my ear. In response, Tuulikki passed him a bowl of red and white striped chocolates from her side of the table. He took one, unwrapped it and put it in his mouth.

“OK,” Tuulikki said and, carefully taking the hot kettle in her hand, started pouring coffee into my cup. I had never seen coffee so thoroughly black, tar-like even. As the liquid settled in my cup a golden froth built around the surface. The smell was more than coffee. It was coffee and then something extra. It was the smell of coffee that had forgotten its manners and decided to let it all hang out. It was the smell of coffee that just didn’t care. I took a sip and it was like a three-course meal. Thick, rich, and delicious. Fatty, even. Oily. A few of the grains, those not yet settled to the bottom of the kettle, did so on my tongue.

“We have a coffee machine, but she prefers it this way,” Kalle said to me. I could see why not everyone would. But I could see why she did. It was Marmite. It was a taste of the past. It was good. And, as I went to take the last sip from my cup, Tuulikki called out.

“Don’t do that.”

As the remainder of my cup entered my mouth, it felt like the contents of a sandpit had been emptied there. It turned out the grounds settle in both the kettle and the cup. I poured myself some more nevertheless.

The break passed meditatively with little discussion, as I’d become used to by that point of my life in Finland and among Finns. Tuulikki asked me how my Finnish learning was going. I told her, in Finnish, the same thing I always said at that point: that I was starting to be able to speak quite well, that I could read nicely and that my writing was coming along, but understanding Finns in real life was difficult (I wanted to say a nightmare but had forgotten the word in Finnish). I told her my brain just didn’t work fast enough yet. By the time I’d translated the first words, I’d already missed so many others. Translating, I told her, just got in the way of understanding. I looked to Kalle and noticed he was looking at me like I was a puppy that had just asked for help with a crossword puzzle. And then, as soon as this registered with me, Tuulikki responded.

“Ah,” she said, taking a sip of her thick, grainy coffee, “understanding… translation, is quite a complicated thing.” I nodded in agreement and she went on.

“I think people from here in Pori are hard to understand, even for other Finnish people. It isn’t just your problem.” Kalle looked to Tuulikki and laughed into his coffee. The steam from the cup blew out from his lips as he took another sip.

“What is a good example?” She said, her hand trembling as it brought her coffee cup to her lips. She gently sipped.

“When a Pori person asks you for a drink or a coffee, we tell you to come, we don’t actually ask. We say ‘come for a drink’.” She leaned forward to me. “That sounds rude to most Finns, but it isn’t rude for someone from Pori, it’s just how we talk to each other. This behaviour, it just doesn’t translate to other Finns, not just people like you.”

“It’s like words, the things we say and do, they can’t really be translated at all,” I said.

“There is too much to be understood,” she waited, looking for the words, “in the things not said,” Tuulikki said. “It is as though to understand, you need to understand the meaning of the silence, the meaning of things not said.”

Kalle started laughing. “It is funny,” he said, “they say you can tell if someone is from Pori when they leave a room. They never say goodbye. They just go away. No hugs. Nothing.”

This reminded me of the biggest difference I had seen between my Finnish and English families. In England, it is as though our words of love, our gestures, are the ways we prove our love for each other. It is only through these things, these daily reminders, that we can be sure it still exists. We need to make love real this way whenever we can or else that feeling might become lost.

When I finished telling Tuulikki this, she interrupted with a hint of a laugh.

“Well, it is different in Finland. Perhaps the feeling is we don’t need to repeat ourselves. If we’ve said I love you once, you can just maybe…” she paused. She looked to Kalle. I knew what she was about to say.

“You can assume we keep loving you forever.”

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Pot Coffee (Pannukahvi)

Here’s how to make proper Finnish “pot coffee”, the way Tuulikki made it that day and thick enough to stand a spoon in… nearly.

You can do this over a campfire or just on your stove at home. You don’t need anything fancy, but you do need a metal pot or pan: stainless steel or enamel, a fancy cast iron thing would be very traditional.

Start by boiling your water. Then take the pan/pot off the heat, wait a few moments, and stir in your coffee. You want a coarse grind, something like you’d use in a French press. Use about one tablespoon per cup, so if you’re making four cups (about 500ml of water), use four scoops of coffee.

Give it a stir and let it sit for 5 minutes. Don’t press it, strain it, or mess about with it. Just wait. The grounds will settle to the bottom (pretty much) and what you’re left with is strong, unfiltered, almost fatty coffee that tastes really very special.

Pour gently so you don’t get a cupful of grit.

Otherwise, just be careful with that last sip.