The greatest sensual pleasure to be had from coffee beans is putting your nose into a bag of freshly ground beans and having an aroma orgasm meltdown. Nothing else in the coffee world approaches that. Because every time you get high from that great aroma you think “Aahh, what a great cup of coffee will come from this!” And of course, the coffee never tastes as good as the aroma promises. No matter how well prepared, the sip always falls short.

Ground coffee-bean aroma is right up there in the top-ten pantheon, which also includes (a) the smell of burning leaves on an early October evening on a suburban street in New Jersey, (b) the aroma of the seats and carpeting in a brand-new BMW or Mercedes or Range Rover while the car sits inside a dealership, (c) the scent of White Musk oil (i.e., purchasable at the Body Shop) that’s been recently applied to the neck of a freshly showered lady in her mid 30s, (d) the smell of downtown Manhattan streets after a heavy evening rainshower in mid July, (e) the scent of damp agricultural soil near crops in California’s Imperial Valley after another nighttime rainshower, and (f) the smell of soaked beach sand in the early evening after a rainshower.

I’m basically saying that people everywhere buy coffee because of the sizzle rather than the steak.