My caffeine addiction started with morning Cokes in grad school. When our kids were young I got to the point where I was drinking a couple of 20 ounce Diet Cokes per day. That struck me as too much, so I gave it up for Lent even though I’m not Catholic. I soon replaced it with a smaller amount of coffee. I must not be too addicted, since there are no withdrawal symptoms when I don’t have it.
don’t waste money at Starbucks or Dunkin Donuts
buy a drip coffee maker at Walmart. I like Hamilton Beach brand appliances. buy a coffee scoop (they are on the grocery aisle next to the coffee grounds and filters)
http://www.walmart.com/ip/Hamilton-Beach-Ensemble-12-Cup-Coffeemaker-Red/16503567
get a pound of Dunkin Donut coffee, coffee scoop and filters at the grocery.
use two level coffee scoops and fill the decanter to the 8 cup line with water.
pour in water and prepare the filter
for a newbie use 1 1/2 scoops coffee at first for 8 cups (on the decanter) water
enjoy
we actually use a cheap plastic water pitcher to make coffee. fill your clean coffee decanter to the 8 cup line. pour in pitcher.
mark the level with a sharpie. Now you know how much water to add.
coffee decanters get an oil buildup and you really shouldn’t pour water from them into the coffee machine.
Early AM fishing trip. 7, 8 yrs old maybe. Was cold and sleepy, big brother was too. So, Dad fixed us up hot cocoa with coffee. Basic coffee was not a regular beverage til HS with those ungodly (for a teen) early class times.
Became very into the flavours and nuances of different coffees and methods in my 20s.
Currently an open minded snob concerning my own tastes.
I loved the smell of coffee. I fixed the pot every morning for my parents. While mom cooked breakfast.
I finally started drinking it in high school.
I still like the smell, but I’ll be 50 this Fall and I still cannot drink the stuff*!* Tastes like cigarettes. Or rather, like a boiled ashtray. Put cream and/or sugar in it? You get a boiled ashtray with cream & sugar. Put a ton of cream & sugar in it? You get hot chocolate that someone flicked a cigarette butt into. Bleeeeech*!*
You’ve done a blind taste test comparison? I’m glad I wasn’t walking that mall the same day as you.
This thread just reminded me that I added a teaspoon of sugar to my coffee in high school. Drank it black after college. Hadn’t thought of that in 35 years. I’d never sweeten coffee now.
<shrug> I guess maybe a little sugar helped me develop a taste for coffee.
I came to it pretty late, via dessert. It seemed to pair nicely with a dense chocolate mousse or whatever, at a dinner party or fancy restaurant. After a few years of that, the natural progression was to try it with pancakes & sausage at IHOP—but still in the evening—and then with mid-afternoon snacks in wintertime. Then, finally, with breakfast . . . instead of the orange juice I had wasted millions of calories on, not to mention the trouble I’d gone to trying to keep it cold in cheap motel rooms or to find it at all when traveling abroad.
I never drank coffee as a kid. When I lived in Africa at 10 I stayed with people from Colombia and drank tea. (Milk there was either powdered or poison.) I only got started when I worked on a political campaign in high school. And I only got hooked when I got married.
We have a coffee machine with a built-in grinder, though finding beans in the supermarket is getting harder and harder.
I like their beans. But at work we used to have a brand of coffee called “Superior” - which tells you right there that it wasn’t.
But it was free. I doubt they sell to anyone but tea-drinking purchasing agents.
I got into coffee in my 20s, after a tea phase. A friend in this little Japanese village I used to live near at the time introduced me to really good coffee at his coffee shop, and I kind of went from there. Good coffee is nowhere near as bitter as the over-roasted, old, or set-on-a-burner-and-burnt-for-hours stuff you typically get in restaurants. You can get good coffee in the few actual coffee shops that haven’t been destroyed by Starbucks.
And even Starbucks isn’t horrible for the style they make, though a slightly lighter roast would make better espresso. Almost no one drinks it without mixers, so you don’t really notice the difference anyway.
Since you’re looking for good (presumably black brewed) coffee recommendations, check an earlier post on making coffee I did.
Good starter equipment:
[ul]
[li]Beans. You want fresh-roasted. If you don’t have a roaster within feasible distance, Blue Bottle (formerly Tonx, which I referenced in my earlier post) offers mail-order. Lots and lots of recommendations from picky buggers, so probably a good bet, though I don’t have personal experience with them. Avoid pre-ground anything and roasted beans that don’t have enough turnover to ensure freshness i.e. anything you’d buy in a supermarket. Also avoid Starbucks; burnt all to shit.[/li][li]Grinder. recommendations here; I independently settled on the Porlex as the best of 4 grinders I’d tried so far before I ran across that article and got outside confirmation that [del]I am awesome[/del] other people like it too.[/li][li]Brewer. If you follow that first link for the grinders, they have a link to other coffee gear. The Hario is probably the simplest if you want to brew one cup at a time or have a pot already, or the Chemex if you don’t have a pot. [/li][/ul]
That’s all you really need. Even a kettle is kind of optional.
Geeks rave about the Aeropress, which I have, but it’s nothing special. It’s compact and easy to pack if you’re serious enough about coffee to travel with it, but a pour-over setup is simpler, easier, and makes more than a cup at a time. I use the Aeropress at work, pour-over at home.
Up to the age of thirteen, I disliked the taste of coffee (not to hating-like-poison-point – I just didn’t like it): refused to drink coffee, which my elders were OK with – the go-to alternatives were tea and hot chocolate.
When I was thirteen I was living for a prolonged spell with an uncle and aunt, owing to a family crisis. My uncle and I were in a – cafe, eatery, whatever – in town one day, for “a cup of something hot”. He opted for coffee; I asked for tea; he gently suggested that if I made an attempt to tolerate coffee, and at least sometimes drank it, things would go socially that bit more smoothly for me. His words made me feel shamed and rather foolish; I had a coffee, and found it quite bearable – from then on, coffee has been on my hot-drinks list, and I came to like it perfectly well. I’m grateful to my uncle for giving me that nudge: while the whole thing has not been a very big deal, I get the impression that people tend to take a negative view of a “fusspot” of any kind.
A friend and contemporary of mine, has gone a different route. From childhood, he has liked coffee, and hated tea – he won’t touch tea except when “compelled by extreme circumstances”. I’d think it very likely that his elders and mentors tried to do what my uncle did with me – to persuade him that learning to tolerate tea, would pay off for him interaction-wise – but he’s a guy who is totally convinced of his complete rightness on all issues, and is impervious to shame or ridicule.
Well, this morning I tried Anaamika and beowulff’s suggestions and tried some DD coffee.
It was less bad, in the sense that getting a filling is less bad than getting a root canal.
I think steronz’s advice about “just needing to get used to it” is probably accurate. So I think the free sludge at work is what I’m going to drink for the next week or two and see if I can stick with it.
I don’t think I’m going to actually get my own setup until I’ve decided it’s a habit I really want to cultivate - no point in plunking down a couple hundred on a good set of machinery if I’m not going to use it.
I have appreciated all the stories though (Rigamarole, you made me actually laugh out loud, as opposed to just typing that when something was funny).
My transition was white chocolate peppermint mochas>mochas>flavored lattes>coffee with cream and sugar>coffee with cream>coffee. That started when I was in middle school and by the time I was a sophomore in college, I was drinking black coffee. At this point I have a raging caffeine addiction to the point where I need a cup of coffee or something caffeinated within half an hour of waking up or I get a raging headache that lasts all day. (And god help me if I oversleep on the weekend). As much as I do legitimately enjoy the flavor and stimulus of coffee, I’m not sure that if I’d avoided it before and were not addicted now, I’d be looking to add this monkey to my back, small and cute though it may be.
Up until my 3rd year of med school, I rarely had coffee or any beverage with caffeine. Cold water on my face had always worked when I needed to be awake for studying. I found that didn’t work after 28 hours of wakefulness while doing things on the wards. Coffee was free in the doctor’s lounge in Mr. Hospital, and it helped me stay awake on my feet, so coffee it was. I drank for effect from the very start. 
Some of us like our coffee way too much. While I’m not the coffee snob some in this thread are, I do have an expensive drip machine designed to brew at optimal temperature & time and I grind coffee beans (blade, not burr grinder) just before making the pot.
That said, the vast majority of home coffee drinkers are perfectly happy with supermarket pre-ground coffee coming out of a <$50 Mr. Coffee. Other less environmentally and fiscally concerned coffee drinkers are happy with their Keurig machines. And like anything, a subset of people go overboard and insist that is the only way to do it “right”, but it’s not.
I grow my own beans and raise my own monkeys.
At age 64 I’m 5 feet 7 inches, two inches taller than my Dad’s adult height, six inches taller than Mom’s.
By the way, “coffee stunts your growth” is an Urban Myth.
Edit: Dad was never a coffee drinker.
I never saw a reason to get anything except a standard drip pot. Mr Coffee has gone downhill in quality. I won’t buy one any more. Brands like Hamilton Beach are still reliable. I’m still using one that was bought in 2007. (I linked to a very similar, updated model earlier)
Yuban is my daily coffee. A slight upgrade over Folgers. But I’ll happily drink Folgers too.
the key to good coffee. Is to use the same amount of water and grounds every time. Experiment until you get just the strength you prefer. Then make it the same way every morning.
There was a time that I drank two pots a day. Now I just make one a day. Had to cut back because it was irritating my stomach. That also means I make it weaker these days. No more strong coffee for me. My stomach can’t tolerate it anymore.