My coffee progression went as follows:
Home-brewed good coffee (five years).
Home-brewed espresso using a Starbucks machine (five years).
Home-brewed espresso using a Rancilio Silvia machine and a Mazzer burr grinder (six months now).
Home-brewed ristretto using the same (two months now).
I buy beans from Caffe del Doge (they get them from Venice, Italy), and I take my ristretto with a good dose of raw sugar. One double-shot every morning.
Aw, man…
…now I’m down. And I mean, *really * down. 
My head hurts and buzzes unplaesantly.
My urine smells like coffee.
So does my sweat.
The vibrations of my own voice in my skull make me want to hurl.
I’m never drinking coffee again.
Half-and-half, two cups, thru the standard drip filter: Yuban and Medaglia D’Oro.
Mmm! Nope, no adulterating ingredients, just the coffee.
OneCentStamp, those are the withdrawal effects! You gotta either drink less of it or spread it out over a longer period!
No way, dude. What I have to do is wait a month until I forget what this feels, like, then **DO IT AGAIN!!! ** (mwahahahahahaaaa…)
No way, dude. What I have to do is wait a month until I forget what this feels like, then **DO IT AGAIN!!! ** (mwahahahahahaaaa…)
OneCentStamp, take it easy if you can.
I drink more than half a gallon of coffee a day, and I have almost total tolerance. In my house we have an Elektra espresso machine (retail price $800!!!OMG - it was a gift though). I have about 4 large cups a day from that.
In my office we have a Nespresso machine. I have about 6 large cups a day from that.
I can drink a big double espresso and go straight to sleep afterwards.
I think I might have a problem.
I’ve always been a bit peeved that despite loving the smell of coffee I just can’t stand the taste of the stuff. Damn my tastebuds! Damn them to Hell!!!
My day starts off with the home coffee machine of the gods. I put my coffee beans and water in the machine the night before, and I wake up the next morning to fresh-ground, fresh-brewed coffee.
Do not diss the mocha frappuccino!!
Does it get expensive, since you have to fill it with “coffee pods” instead of regular old coffee? It looks nice, but does it end up being more expensive than grinding your own coffee beans and making coffee the old way?
I love coffee. Sure, the buzz is nice, but I think I’ve gotten accustomed to it because I drink it daily. I just like the taste of a good coffee. Unfortunately, I can’t share this joy with my boyfriend, because he can’t stand the stuff.
I don’t have much to add; I just think the OP is bump-worthy …
After removing all other vices, the one remaining pleasure I have in life is my daily bowl of Peet’s Viennese Blend. Puts hair on yer chest, it does.
Put some rum in it, and I’ll bet she will.
I usually just drink enough coffee to avoid the headache and wake up and make it through the morning, but sometimes I’ll go ahead and have a third cup and then I feel like a superhero-- I do this when I need to crank out a great deal of good writing by noon. Four cups, though (or a godverdammt Starbucks large), and then I start seeing through time and smelling colors and feeling absolutely twitchy and ill and it’s no good. A fine line.
I don’t have coffee (too sensitive to caffeine), but Dad’s coffee had a Reputation. It was coffee you didn’t want to provoke; coffee that, if you said it was weak, would jump out of its cup, walk to your car and hit you over the head with it. And I happen to be surprisingly good at appraising stuff I don’t actually take like coffee, wine or watermelons (color, smell…).
We had those Flavias for some megameetings in the US and of course the Spaniards and Latin Americans and Italians grouched that it was dishwashing water (lit. translation). I suggested using a bag of the 5-star strength in espresso setting (gives you half a cup), then using a second bag without changing cups. Got me a lot more fans that my mad skillz with Access, once more proving that the path to anybody’s heart goes through the stomach.
You and me both then. I wake up with headaches because of my lack of overnight caffienne. :eek:
I am so looking forward to the move to Paris – they do good coffee at the institute, even the espresso that comes out of their vending machines are drinkable…
I know someone who once asked for a quadruple ristoretto, with minimal water, got it, and was asleep two hours later.
Is it possible to build up a lifetime tolerance to caffeine?
Cuz I grew up on Diet Pepsi and Diet Coke (my mother was always on a diet so we never had “sugar sodas” in the house, just shitloads of Diet Cola X) and when I hit college I did the whole “frappuccino/iced mocha/iced coffee/regular coffee” evolution…
I drank it by the gallon, mainly b/c I hung out at coffee shops til like six in the morning studying, and I even hit up the No-Doze during finals…
And I still don’t have any apparent caffeine buzz. To this day. I fell asleep on the No-Doze in college–it just made my stomach ache–and I can drink two Red Bulls at work and several Diet Cokes…I can drink espresso straight, and enjoy it…
And yet I can’t tell I’ve had any caffeine. I don’t go through withdrawals if I don’t get it, and I don’t get any energy out of consuming it when I do.
I feel robbed.
I do enjoy a good cup of coffee; I just couldn’t tell you if it was regular or decaf. Regardless of how much of it I have.
Again, I feel robbed.
Actually, in all fairness, the worst espresso shot in Rome was far better than just about anything I’ve tried anywhere else in the world. And a great espresso shot in Rome is just heavenly.
Starbucks is brown and lukewarm, yet they call it coffee. I got two words for you: Peet’s.
Like Mindfield said, coffee is Gods gift to the working man.
Strong, black with just the teensiest bit of sugar to take some of the bitterness away.
Rinse and repeat as often as possible
If you consider I’m the only one in the house drinking coffee, the pads are for one cup each and are in sealed cans, and stay fresh longer then say, a pack for a regular drip machine does, I’d say it comes out pretty even. I tried a drip machine for a while, and would end up throwing about half of the coffee I opened away because it got old, despite a sealed container.
Another plus is that the Senseo machine give a nice head of foam on the coffee, which I think is nice. And there’s lost of flavoured or gourmet coffees for it, all in the nice pads. So you can switch taste at will, without opening a whole pack and having to spend a week drinking Mocca.
Another thing I found was this refillable coffee pad that will let me experiment. I even bought an ounce of that catpoop-coffee. Used it in the machine. Didn’t do anything for me tho. Maybe I’m used to a better quality of catpoop. 
I would like to thank you for making my addiction to coffee seem to be reasonable by comparison.
It is 11:30 and I am on my fourth cup today.
Does anyone else get headaches if you skip the daily cup.
I remember visiting my parents one year, and the first two days, I had a low grade headache. The second evening, my mom mentioned that they had switched to decaf. That night, I went out and bought myself some real coffee and made it myself the next day. My headache went away.