In the morning, I drink two Disney travel mugs full of Dunkin’s cinnamon blend. Black. I have a nice Moccamaster coffee maker - the carafe is really well insulated so once the coffee is brewed, it stays hot without having to apply extra heat.
Later in the day, I’ll often have a cappuccino from my Breiville. With almond milk. I still haven’t figured out how to get just the right amount of foam, nor how to draw art with it. One day, my home made cappuccino will have a heart to show how much it loves me!
I enjoy a fresh cup of coffee with my dinner. I have a Cuisinart machine that works well for what I want, which is an easy to brew, 12oz cup of hot, but not blistering hot, cup of coffee in less than a minute. (In case you’re wondering, I drink green tea in the morning with my breakfast and bottled water throughout the day as needed.) I like dark coffee, and Peet’s Decaf Major Dickinson’s blend is my preferred roast these days with some Monk Fruit or Stevia and a splash of Unsweetened Vanilla Almond Milk for extra flavor.
Cà phê sữa đá – Vietnamese iced coffee with condensed milk. I’m being pigheadedly traditional with the spelling though. Even the native Vietnamese spell it café now. I like it with very little condensed milk, which in the the north you can order as cà phê nâu đá, but in the rest of the country and most restaurants in the U.S., you just have to ask them to dial down the milk a bit.
I like my coffee the way I like my women:
Dark, bitter and not too particular.
I love coffee as a comfort food so much that I’m not that picky about how it’s made…
So I don’t take the time to worry about where the beans are from or how they’re ground.
And that non-pickiness is handy: at my (wonderful) local coffee joint, I order drip coffee so they can just pour me a cup.
I’m impatient and I’d rather be drinking coffee while the friends who ordered extravagant espresso drinks are waiting for eleven other millennials’ whaddafuggaccinos to be concocted.
Over the decades, my coffee journey has evolved like a caffeinated Darwinian timeline. It all began with an old-school percolator—I’d drink a full pot/day during finals week.
Then came the Mr. Coffee era, followed by progressively better drip machines, a few pod brewers that promised “convenience” but delivered “meh,” and eventually the more artisanal route: French presses and a revolving cast of espresso machines.
I’m a strong, medium-dark-roast kind of guy—half & half and saccharin only, please. I’ve been using saccharin so long that real sugar tastes suspiciously like it’s up to something (same with sodas).
Back in the day, when it was in vogue, I joined a coffee-of-the-month club and tried beans from all over—Kenya, Guatemala, Ethiopian, and Hawaii’s Blue Mountain were my favorites. I grind fine for flavor, and because I like my coffee to punch me in the gut.
These mornings, my go-to is a double espresso cappuccino. Sometimes two, if I’m planning to lift a small car or argue with Comcast.
My parents drank Hills Brothers brewed in a “Presto” stainless steel percolator. After working for a couple years in various optical shops, I learned to drink percolator coffee with coffeemate while working. That lasted (at work and at home) until we replaced the percolator with a Mr Coffee.
I was an “on the road salesman” for 2 years where I learned to enjoy Mc D’s black and found it delicious when fresh;… undrinkable when stale.
Then I tasted Starbucks and liked it and so replaced my Mr.Coffee with a Brookstone 1-cup drip that did not have the hotplate:.. just an insulated mug.
I am now enjoying Starbucks “Sumatra” as my go - to brew.
The only thing is that in my 70’s now, I can only drink One full cup each AM,..the old ticker is just too sensitive to caffeine!
Coffee to me is like wine: I can tell the difference between cheap and real good stuff and generally am not too plussed. At work the pod style ones are fine (now ones that look like oversized tea bags).
At home though I drink small roaster single origin fancy stuff. Because my wife is a coffee geek and frequents a few of those shops. For me the French Press (ground in store for convenience) in the morning with water heated in the electric kettle is the morning routine. Black. I leave half in the thermos pot for her first cup and if there’s some left in the pot the next morning I’ll microwave it for my first cup while making that morning’s press pot.
She also has other whole beans that she grinds for various sorts of pour overs when she isn’t rushing out.
She talks all about the different notes of different beans. Yeah yeah …
We buy our beans from a local roaster, usually medium to dark roast. Then it’s brewed in a French press. I take mine with sugar and half and half. First cup is while I do Wordle and Connections.
I can taste those. And i enjoy it. And i don’t put milk in good coffee. But i also find a warm cup of mediocre coffee drowned in half & half to be comforting and pleasant.
(No sweetener for me, either way. Unless it’s full out ice cream. I do like coffee ice cream )
If my stomach would allow, I would drink coffee all day long. But it won’t. I drink strong black tea, earl grey loose leaf, two cups maximum, with goat milk plus evaporated milk. I permit myself a cup of coffee with half&half at Coffee Hour after church on Sundays. And when I’m traveling, which is rare now, I drink coffee as there is no way to get good quality tea out there. If I’m out in the godforsaken territories of America, it’s Starbucks, just coffee please with a lot of room for milk. My stomach does not complain.
My husband who does not have my issues, makes local-roaster coffee with freshly ground beans in a Moka every morning. Ah, I wish.
Again, to me like wine: I know they are different; they clearly taste different, I know ones I like; and I don’t have or care to learn the vocabulary. She OTOH is careful to use the flat bottom filter or the V shaped cone one depending on the bean … and those … fine notes … are vs wasted on me.
I’m the same with wine, my palate is very simple and all those woody and fruity overtones do nothing for me. But that is me and not all the people that can taste and appreciate the niceties of wine.
I count myself lucky, being a wine snob can get really expensive, being a beer snob is relatively cheap. You can be moderately picky about coffee and it is still cheap if you’re making it at home.
So I am kind of thankful my taste in wine runs to stainless steel casks. And I still enjoy going to wineries with my wife who has a much more refined palate.
I’ve commented in other klatches about the awfulness that is hotel-room coffee. In the US I’ve figured out ways to MacGyver around the issue with several methods with varying success (I can usually raise the level from awful to at least mediocre)
In New Zealand though, the hotel-room coffee situation was much more dire. There’s just no way to get a drinkable cup o’ Joe with an electric kettle and a packet (or even two) of instant coffee crystals. A couple of places I stayed in had automated machines in the breakfast area that dispensed espresso and cappuccino at the touch of a button, which was a godsend.
I suppose I could just go to a local coffee shop for my morning fix. That would require me to make my self presentable, which is more effort than I’m willing to make right after waking up when I’m on vacation.
I hate filtered coffee. I’ll drink espresso drinks, or instant coffee, or Turkish, but anything filtered through a percolator, French press or whatever, has this awful oily taste to it that I just can’t stand.
For those who like flavored coffee, I would suggest getting a bag of Penzey’s Baking Spice. A small amount sprinkled in your morning grounds will give your brew a uniquely warm flavor.
I love this! In the future I am going to refer to coffee menus as a whaddafuggaccino list.
I drink whatever coffee is available. I do prefer creamer but can survive with any kind of milk and a touch of sugar.
At home I use generic coffee pods and caramel machiatto creamer.
When I visit family I get to try bean ground coffee. I have found Peet’s coffee to be very good.
In Aruba I tried Juan Valdez coffee and loved it.
When traveling I carry some single serve creamer and coffee packets. Cafe Bustelo coffee packets are delightful to take with me for a quick cup when I arrive at my destination because coffee availability is never predictable. I just need hot water.
I carry small straws to drink the coffee as I have sensitive teeth. The straws also act as a stirring implement.
I’m kind of weird when it comes to coffee. Started out drinking Folgers, Maxwell House, and Seaport Coffee (a local producer in SE Texas) in college and afterward for about a decade.
Met my wife, and we basically went on something of a coffee journey- we got grinders, moka pots, french presses, etc… and were generally grinding our own and drinking the fancy stuff and enjoying it. We had(have?) a ranking of local roasters who we like and which of their roasts and blends we prefer.
Then when the pandemic hit, we went back to stuff we could reliably do with curbside pickup or delivery, which meant generally Folgers and Maxwell House. And the funny thing is that neither of us really cared much. It woke us up, it wasn’t offensive tasting, it was plentiful, and it was cheap.
I mean, we’re not averse to the better stuff and indeed often do drink it on weekends, but for any old Tuesday morning, the cheap stuff does the trick while I’m driving in to work.