At the risk of sounding like some kind of pretentious person or a white girl who wears Uggs and rides horses: I recently discovered the art of cold brew drinks. I might be the last person in the world to discover this, and I’m sure it’s not new to you, but I once had an editor tell me I gotta “paint a picture” for people who don’t know what the fuck I’m talking about, so this is a quick summary: instead of boiling hot water to make coffee or tea, a cold brew requires you to use regular temperature water. You just put your grounds in a mason jar, pour room temperature tap water over it, fill the bottle, cover it, and wait for at least 12 hours. It’s very fun and a cool way to make coffee/tea that makes you feel like you’re conducting science experiments.
You might be wondering why a person would choose to do this instead of just doing it the faster way, and pouring hot water over it right away. I’ve found that boiling hot water gives you a brewing process of about 4 minutes in a French press. And as I just mentioned: cold brewing is a lot longer and can go past 12 hours. The benefits for the cold brew I’ve found online are: it is less acidic and better for your stomach, it tastes less bitter and harsh because hot water releases different things than cold, and some people feel that cold brew hits harder (even though it’s most likely because you have to use more coffee to have the same caffeine levels as hot brewed stuff, and people end up dumping more grounds to compensate for this fact).
The reason why I wanted to write about this was for the purpose of linking the concept of “brewing” to writing. This might come across even way more pretentious now, but who gives a shit, I’ll keep going because I think it’s noteworthy and might potentially help people if they’re down to read it and have made it this far. I feel like there are similarities between the whole cold brew/hot brew process and the art of writing something/working on a big creative project. It’s important to talk about this distinction, because as I just detailed above: a “hot brew” and a “cold brew” might give you similar results, but they are actually much different products. Both methods will take you where you need to go (somewhat similar to the tiresome sativa vs. indica conversation), but they differ on a minute basis. In fact, even if you were to “hot” brew coffee, and then simply add ice to it to make it colder, it still wouldn’t be considered a “cold” brew due to the fact that the process wasn’t exactly the same, and there will still be more bitterness/acidity, etc. I would argue this is the same kind of thing with creative work.
I have a lot of experience writing things like novels and screenplays, so I will speak to that. When you do something like writing a novel, for example, you can’t just start it one day out of the blue, and keep going until you’re finished. Although ideas do certainly seem to come from nowhere, that doesn’t mean it is always appropriate to just get to work right away and do lots of work as soon as you get an idea. That can lead to burnout, and even worse: you might not end up finishing what you started. Even if you do finish what you began, I also think it just won’t hit the same way if you rush through it like that. If you work without taking time to think about what it is you are doing and how you want to shape your project, I think that can have the effect of coming off too thoughtless. You might have a lot of work to show, and it might even be very good, but the quality will always be different if you are patient and let something “brew” for awhile. One cannot “hot brew” an idea, and improvise the whole thing so it gets done quickly. I mean, you obviously can, but I’m just saying that would only be a first draft in my opinion, because there is a high chance rushing things will effect the overall quality of your final product. No one is such a genius that they can get something perfectly right on the first try.
One example of what I mean when I apply “cold brewing” to the idea of screenwriting would be Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction (I use this movie as an example for a lot of different things, I know, but it’s one of my favourite movies and the examples work). One of the most iconic scenes of the whole film is Jules’ Ezekiel 25:17 monologue. First of all, the real passage in the bible is not what Jules says at all. In fact, real cinema bros are well aware that Tarantino was paying homage to the opening of The Bodyguard with Sonny Chiba. He always thought it sounded cool, so he repurposed it for Pulp Fiction. Okay, this is not a big deal, you’re probably thinking. Everyone knows Tarantino references other stuff, big deal.
The main reason why this is striking to me is even more telling: I’ve read that the Ezekiel monologue was, in fact, not actually written for Pulp Fiction at first. Because Tarantino was always writing and working on various screenplays, he was always experimenting with different scenes and ideas; one of which being the Ezekiel monologue. It made an appearance in another project initially, and apparently Tarantino just knew deep down it would fit Pulp Fiction much, much better. He was right, of course, and today we all know and love that monologue because Tarantino had the foresight to wait for the right project to use it for. To get back to what I was saying regarding the “cold brew,” sometimes things fall into place artistically simply for the fact that you let it stew for awhile. What would have happened if Pulp Fiction never got made? The monologue would have appeared in another movie with an actor not as great as Sam Jackson, and no one would even remember it now. It would still be cool, but not in a groundbreaking way.
What I like about the cold brew process is that, on one hand, it seems very lazy: you are essentially just letting a bottle of liquid sit there without doing anything to it for awhile. It is true that it doesn’t require that much effort, but the end result is actually somehow more impressive than the amount of effort it took. When you come back to the mason jar half a day later it seems like you did all this work, but it was really just nature doing things for you. You did like a minute of work, and time took care of the rest. I know this all seems silly, but it is very much like the writing of a novel or script. Sometimes if you rush to make something and work too fast, you might not say everything you need to in the best way possible. You might forget to say something, or you might not have considered every possible angle of going about something. Or you might blow your load too early and do something ineffectively. When you let something cook and marinate properly, it will come out even cooler than if you didn’t.
The only distinction I would say here that is important to remember: once enough marination has passed, one needs to end it at the perfect time. Too much time can lead to festering and making an idea rotten, just like something being overcooked or left in a mason jar for too long. It’s necessary to find the right balance of this concept that works for you: you want your ideas to feel organic and have a certain level of freshness to them, but you should also let them cook and marinate properly for the world. Sometimes when things aren’t ready to be shared with the world, it often feels that way as well; artistic failures are usually either undercooked and too raw or overdone and burnt with a bitter ass flavour. Let things sit for awhile, but not so long they get hemmorrhoids. Bend, but don’t break, you catch my drift? Lean wit it. Rock wit it. Lmao.
When you cold brew something you allow it to become whatever it wants to be.