Acquiring the taste for coffee

Con­tin­u­ing to fol­low my tales of my addic­tion to caf­feine, and my search for more palat­able, inex­pen­sive, and less sug­ary dis­tri­b­u­tion sys­tems, I finally come to the point. I’m try­ing to acquire the taste for cof­fee right now.

I’ve always glam­or­ized cof­fee drink­ing in my mind. Older, wiser peo­ple I wanted to be like when I grew up drank it.  It smelled so good, that the taste was a huge dis­ap­point­ment. I remem­ber my first cup vividly. After I begged him to pour me a cup one time, my Peepaw poured me a cup of milk, put about a table­spoon of cof­fee in it, and handed me the sugar bowl. He told me to put “maybe 4 big ol’ spoons rite cheer” which I did. Heap­ing spoon­fuls. (This is the same set of grand­par­ents that let me add as much sugar to my cereal as I wanted. Includ­ing Raisin Bran! Yeah, they were cool.) I took a drink, and all I could taste was bit­ter, like a pecan pit. “Add more sugar, baby.” He finally stopped me at half the sugar bowl, and I gave the cup to my brother, who gladly slurped it down.

For many years, I never tried cof­fee again. Cof­fee fla­vored ice creams, cof­fee in pas­tries, any of it, made me gag. I fig­ured I just took after Daddy, who hated the stuff too. Then, around the time he turned 40, he started drink­ing it too.  I thought it was part of a midlife cri­sis, because around that time he also started wear­ing jeans that already had a washed fin­ish and quit look­ing for non-buttoned down col­lars on all his dress shirts.

About a month ago, one of the game night reg­u­lars, let’s call him Von­apier, came early. I was sit­ting around, mopey and bummed, and he said, “I know what will cheer you up! I’ll be right back!”

He ran to the store and came back with two Star­bucks frap­pu­ci­nos. These were the bot­tled kind, which were basi­cally cof­fee, sugar, and cream. One was mocha, and the other vanilla. “I want you to start drink­ing cof­fee, T.”

I have no idea why, but I took it as a chal­lenge. It was some­thing to do, right?  I have always liked the idea of being a con­nois­seur, and this was much cheaper than wine or cheese tast­ing classes.  Plus, it kept me going in the morn­ings, when I’m inclined to go back to bed many days lately.  Oh, but those frap­pu­ci­nos were gross, both fla­vors. But I tried to like them, and I ordered a cof­fee a cou­ple of times when I needed a buzz in the morn­ings. I wasn’t sure what I was get­ting, though, and didn’t know how much sugar or cream to add to things at all. I’d drink maybe a quar­ter of the cup and then throw it out.

And then when Mom came up the next time, she stopped by a Starbuck’s and got a frozen frap­pu­cino. I ordered an iced green tea, which she made a weird face about and asked, “Isn’t that bit­ter?” After I laughed at her for drink­ing cof­fee and ask­ing that ques­tion, she offered her drink up to try, and it was yummy! I’d over­come at least the aver­sion to the cof­fee taste! Woot!

I spent about a week mak­ing home­made frappes with instant cof­fee. But I knew I was mak­ing basi­cally what amounted to a cheap milk slushy. So I broke down and bought a cof­fee maker and excit­edly ground some of my very own Starbuck’s French Roast. Heck, I like dark choco­late, so I should like the bolder cof­fee, right?

Oh, wrong. So wrong! That crap tastes like ashes!!!  I can find no redeem­ing value for this junk.  It doesn’t even give the apart­ment that deli­cious cof­fee smell!  Instead, it smells like I burnt some fudge.

I didn’t dive in with my nor­mal research like I should have, that’s for cer­tain. I now know that the darker roast means, well, duh, that they roast the beans longer.  That trans­lates to less cof­fee fla­vor and more smoke.  No won­der that stuff gagged me out and set me back to square one.  I’m cheap, though, so I’ve been try­ing to make do all week.  I’ve read up on how to brew the best pot of cof­fee in a home pot.  Brew­ing it right helped a lot, but it’s still insuf­fer­able.  I was adding… oh, 4, 5 tea­spoons of sugar, and who knows how much half and half, and some­times cocoa pow­der.  And I’m still hold­ing my nose while drink­ing it.  Luck­ily for me, all the research I’ve done tells me I’m only sup­posed to keep cof­fee about a week before it goes stale.  So I have an excuse to try again.

Hav­ing done my read­ing, my next pur­chase is going to be the highly acclaimed Eight O’Clock 100% Colom­bian.  It’s been very highly rated, and is cheap.  The medium roast should allow me to taste the fla­vor of the beans and have that yummy smell I was expect­ing.  I hope so, because I’m actu­ally lean­ing on the freeze-dried instant cof­fee I bought to make those first frappes lately.  And, sad to say, thanks to my need for caf­feine, I’m start­ing to like the instant stuff.  It only takes one packet of Tru­via or spoon of sugar and a spoon of half and half to be palatable.

So, all of you cof­fee experts, help!  Lay your best tips on me.  I’ve got to do some­thing, before all my efforts at becom­ing a cof­fee snob actu­ally turn me into some­one who only likes junk coffee.