How did you get into coffee?

Cafe Society
81

Like a lot of people raised in the south, I drank sodas in the morning. Diet Coke – no calories and a couple were enough of a kick to get my middle-school/high-school self moving.

I started drinking coffee when I worked in a hospital ER overnights as a teenager. No one wants the nurses falling asleep, so the coffee was free. It was also so thick you could almost chew it. Maxwell House, I think. But it was hot (hospitals are chilly) and the caffeine buzz was great.

I took it with half and half and sugar. I still do, but less of each. Yes, I have a sugar habit, why do you ask? :slight_smile:

I had Cuban coffee at a friend’s house as a teenager. When I started working for an insurance company traveled to Miami, I loved getting Cuban coffee there, too.

Haven’t had any in decades. Now I want some. :frowning:

82

YES! I also really notice the acid, and it’s like drinking something brewed out of the litter box. Ugh.

Weirdly, I don’t care for Columbian coffee and find it to have that acidic/cat pee undertone.

Another vote for Cafe Bustelo. It’s smooth and delicious. My dad and stepmum started buying that decades ago, and it’s so much better than Maxwell House or Folgers or other stuff people in that generation drink. (I’m with the people who blame cigarettes.)

83

I can hardly remember a time when I DIDN’T drink coffee.

Started as a young child with a few sips out of mom’s cup in the morning with cream and sugar. I liked it. By 4th or 5th grade, I was allowed to have a cup in the morning before school. By the time I was 14, my best friend and I had perfected our grind-your-own-beans (only Peet’s would do!) routine in conjunction with a #6 manual pour-over Melitta cone rig. I make my coffee that way to this day. The only change is where I buy my beans: There was a roaster in the mid 80s who started out in the little village where I lived at the time in California. He was coffee crazy! His one-man operation grew and grew. I still buy my beans from his company all these many years later, though I have since moved to Oregon.

My preferred large cup is about a third 1% milk heated to scalding with 2/3rds of a strong French roast. No sugar. I like half and half or cream, but my stomach doesn’t – so 1% is fine with me.

I’ll drink about anything and be grateful if nothing else is around. I don’t mind it black, just prefer the milk if I can have it. If the choice is between cream or black, I’ll take black, or use very little cream.

Coffee is one of my greatest pleasures and about the only vice I haven’t had to give up. And the only one I never will.

84

I first started drinking coffee when I was very young. When I was five or six years old, I’d have ‘coffee’ that was half milk, half coffee, and two spoons of sugar. It wasn’t an everyday thing, but that’s when it started.

I’ve been up for two hours now, and I’m on my third cuppa joe (dark roast, black, no sugar).

85

What you’re seeing is true for some people. I had a receptionist for a while who literally bought coffee from Starbucks three times a day (on the way in to work, at lunch, and on the way home from work). She did this despite the fact that we had coffee on at the office, hot and ready to go when she arrived. She literally spent 25% of her income on coffee and by my estimate, consumed about 1000 calories per day that way.

On the other hand, I don’t even know how to order a coffee in Starbucks because they can’t translate their sizes to English. The only thing I get there (the green tea frappucino, about twice a year) isn’t even on the menu anymore, but apparently I can still order it. :confused:

86

If you look at the board and see three different sizes with three different amounts, it isn’t hard to figure out small/medium/large, and I’ve never had any problem using those terms. Maybe someone did once or twice at a Starbucks somewhere, but I’ve never seen it (although I’m not that much of a Starbucks patron).

As for buying coffee elsewhere, Au Bon Pain had a significantly better cuppa joe than I could get in most offices, so I would get a mega-cup on the way in, but I wouldn’t make a special trip for it later in the day. One office ordered the nastiest coffee known to mankind. I think they collected used coffee grounds, dried them, and repackaged them. Another office had nastiest people. Don’t ever start a pot of coffee and walk away, as you’d come back to the empty pot burning on the hot plate. Almost no one would ever make a pot, but as soon as someone did, the vultures would come in. And forget ever washing the pot, filter basket, or cleaning the machine. Lastly, as smoking declined, people were no longer taking smoke breaks; now there were coffee breaks, especially if all one drinks are the mega-calorie, overpriced, faintly coffee-flavored drinks.

87

I started drinking coffee sporadically my last two years in college. Always had to have milk and sugar in it. I started drinking it regularly when I started teaching, at the age of 23. Within the first year, the creamer and sugar part became too much of a hassle so I quit using them and never went back. I was definitely using it for the caffeine. I read a quote on another board a few days ago- “Acquired taste is the Stockholm Syndrome of the culinary world” and I believe it applies very well to coffee.

88

Do you milk the monkeys?

89

Never like coffee growing up. About 25 years ago I went to Costa Rica to shoot a job on the Hacienda La Minita plantation in the mountains.

For the first time I tasted coffee made from beans I’d watched be hand-roasted. Literally. Turned in a steel cylinder that rested on a gas flame. Hand-turned and roasted to just the right color by the owner of Hacienda La Minita, who was ( I believe ) the 4th generation of owners of that land and that bean.

What a revelation. While I’ve not become a coffee snob, I realized there is nuance and there are subtleties of flavor to be found. Yes, I adore Dunkin’ Donuts coffee. ( Smoother than many others ).

But a truly great bean? I admire and enjoy now as I did not before that trip.

Great job, that one. Killed a 5 inch scorpion with a machete at one point. :smiley:

90

No! :confused:

I feed them the beans and then later harvest them back from their excrement. :cool:

Then we lightly wash them, pat them dry on hand made burlap drying sheets, and roast the reclaimed beans to a golden hue.

Heavenly

:dubious:

91

If you’re looking for less acidic, get some dark-roast Sumatra. Trader Joe’s has it. We’re not coffee snobs at all. We just like tasty coffee. In our search for something that tastes strong and rich but not acidic, we’ve somehow gotten into the routine of blending two kinds of beans. We toss them into the grinder each morning and then into the French press. It’s quick and easy.

92

I killed three deer with a club, once. Of course there were fifteen of us in the club.

Navy. 'nuff said. I think anything that runs 24-hours a day, military, cops, hospitals, runs on coffee.

93

During my USAF days, we had a percolator that was on roughly 24/7/365. Don’t know how old it was when I arrived, but when I left 2.5 years later, it was still the same one. It was cleaned once a shift (3x/day), but that thing had so much caffeine infused into the metal that it had the shakes.

It was horrible coffee, but at 4:00a on a slow shift (and there were about 362 slow nights/year), one uses anything that could help one last until relief arrives.

94

I did not drink coffee in high school. Neither of my parents were big coffee drinkers. That, and I tend to wake up fairly quickly, assuming I got a decent night’s sleep. I also used to have the magical power of not having hangovers.

In college, back in the ancient days when rampant drug abuse and crazed consumption of alcohol were considered legitimate forms of self expression among the youth of America, I knew a lot of people who drank like fish and did drugs like a mad pharmacist. I was one of them. Although I could usually wake up feeling reasonably fresh; worst I usually had to deal with was a mouth that tasted like the Russian army had marched through it in their sweat socks.

This meant “either brush your teeth or eat or drink something pleasant as soon as you wake up.” Cooking wasn’t permitted in the dorms. On the other hand, neither were drugs and alcohol, and that didn’t stop any of us. I actually started out by using an old dome-topped popcorn popper to make scrambled eggs and bacon; it made a dandy hot plate, was teflon coated, and didn’t need a separate pan to work in. This surprised and delighted my roommate, who found I would gladly make him a breakfast as well if he’d chip in on the ingredients. And we already had a minifridge.

One day, the Head Resident showed up, hung over beyond human belief, and offered not to bust us for cooking in the room if I would make him ham and eggs. I did so. After that, word spread. Friends of mine would show up, cash in hand, begging for a light breakfast so they didn’t have to stagger across campus to the dining hall.

I wound up expanding the operation. Picked up a percolator for a couple bucks at Goodwill, and had coffee handy, with cream and sugar for them what wanted it. On Sunday nights, I would obtain a can of frozen orange juice, and have a gallon of it on ice by morning. It reached a point where of a Sunday morning by sunrise, my roommate would still be snoring while five or six young men in their underwear would be slouched on my bed and chair, sipping coffee and waiting for their scrambled eggs.

There were several occasions where I stayed in on Saturday nights. I didn’t want to have a rough night for fear I wouldn’t be able to handle the business in the morning. I was buying paper plates and styrofoam coffee cups and still actually making money.

I got into the habit of coffee that way. Usually went through at least two pots a morning on Saturday and Sunday mornings, and I began tasting it to make sure it tasted all right. I found that black coffee INSTANTLY erases the awful taste of a night on the town, and I liked the caffeine kick it provided.

Been years, but I still like a cup of coffee in the mornings and taking the time to wake up at leisure.

Still make a pretty mean plate of bacon and eggs, for that matter.