Describing the idea of Hooch Coffee should be simple, though I am not even sure it’s about coffee…
Hooch Coffee is about getting folks to begin a search for moments in time, that they simply cannot get back. Life is fast, flashy, and often accompanied by the stress of keeping up and doing what you are suppose to do. And honestly, that’s how it should be!
Life is going to be hard, and if you are worth a damn at all, it’s going to involve hard work and busy hands. After 14 yrs of bouncing around the country on Wildland Firefighting crews, I have learned to recognize those moments, within a day…to stop and just listen.
In the fire world, most of those moments come during a short rain storm or some sort of operational break. Moments to build yourself a little tarp hooch, out of the elements, and rest or “hooch up”. As I got older those moments came with a cup of coffee. From ridgetops at sunset with fire bros, to morning sleeping bag coffee long before sunrise, each is a moment that will never return again. Each one I remember fondly.
I began referring to those cups of coffee as hooch coffees.
Simple as that. Coffee brewed and drank in a hooch. That is what Hooch Coffee is. Catching moments. Stopping and taking time to actually enjoy life, your friend, yourself, the birds, a sunrise or your fire brother on a short break, before chinking out that next chain of line.
It does not matter to me whether it is Hooch Coffee or instant from a packet. What matters to me is that good, hard working Americans, start taking time to enjoy moments. Either alone or with another. Look around and start seeing and listening again. This world and my career has given me a lot of beautiful moments over the years and I want to be a part of giving the opportunity for those moments, to others. That is what I want Hooch to be.
The moment is the hunt, the coffee is simply the horse that gets you there.
Hooch up,
R.R. Browning - Boynton, Okla.