Coffee

[Marek]

We need a thread about coffee.

The coffee here at work is amazing. We have a great expresso machine. I don't make expressos with it, just regular coffees, because expressos are always gone before you know it. You need a full cup, right? I just had a cup so I still have the taste in my mouth. About a year ago we had a different coffee bean each week for five weeks and everyone could vote on them. The beans we have now are the ones I rated the highest, so I'm very happy. I drink 2 or 3 cups of coffee a day. Sometimes, I have to be at our other department a five minutes walk away from here. They've got a nice quiet airconditioned office there (as opposed to the noisy and wood floored office I regularly work at) but I hate it because their coffee is terrible.

[Moosferatu]

espresso

I only started drinking coffee last year as my job required me to walk around for extended periods of time outside in the cold at night. I now use a french press to brew my coffee, and quite enjoy it. I usually get my coffee from a hippy coffee shop close to my college. I'm pretty sure the guy is high every time I go in.

[Marek]

espresso

Haha oh shit!!! I use expresso all the time in an "ironic" "fashion" but obviously I didn't want to here because no one would know.

A French press is pretty fancy.

[Moosferatu]

They're pretty simple to use. Just put the grounds in, add hot water, wait four minutes, and press.

[Roderick]

I will never drink coffee. Or alcohol. Just don't like it Proceed though. The passing of judgment is already done.

[vimes]

I don't dlike coffee, I stick to tea and hot chocolate.

I've been told coffee is like wine in many respects, one of which is that you've got to "bent"(?) your mouth to the taste before appreciating it. I find this a bit weird and never tried to do so... so the only coffees I'm enjoyig are the one made by Ambrosiana an Italian friend of mine, and the very strong ones, because they're aweful, but at least they wake you up.

[Wrestlevania]

They're pretty simple to use. Just put the grounds in, add hot water, stir well, wait four minutes, and press.

Makes a big difference, seriously.

[Moosferatu]

oh yeah, forgot that step.

[Coldkill]

I like Tea to coffee. Plus tea contains anti-oxidents which I won't explain now .

Anyway people tell me that the coffee pot thing you get is quite good. The one where you put the beans in the bottom and boil the water inside of it.

Cold

[Marek]

I suspect the antioxidants thing is a huge load of crap. You know, my mom keeps talking about it and I don't trust what she reads in women's magazines. Don't bother linking to information saying it's true because I already looked it up in my gut.

However I often drink rooibos tea before sleeping, which contains no theine and tons of the magical HP increasing substance known as antioxidants.

I like drinking coffee in the morning and after lunch, but switch to tea after 4pm or so.

[Jayel]

We have a bucketful of Tim Horton's ground coffee at work here, but the coffee machine's been broken for a while. So I have no choice but to drink some cheap tea.

[Noyb]

I like the taste of coffee, but drink it infrequently. Thankfully, I do not yet have high tolerance to caffeine, so it's been there for me when I absolutely need it.

[MrChlorophyll]

I can choke down coffee fine. Whatever.

But tea? No way in hell. When I was a kid, I had a whee problem with swallowing pills, so for echinacea and other herbally type medicines I'd have to open the pill capsules and dump it in a glass of water. So when I try tea, all I can taste is the harbally death flavour of nasty medicines that were not meant to be tasted by the human tongue lest horrific regurgitations ensue.

So, not a big fan of tea.

Coffee's ok.

[hermes]

Ahh coffee.

I usually make it on this:

I have three sizes for different occasions,2 cups, 6 cups and 12 cups (espresso cops).

However I do also have this:

which makes absolutely amazing coffee (and steam-heats milk) - but it takes a bit more time and effort.

And I absolutely detest the french press - it destroys coffee with its evil ways.

Finally I would really like to try Kopi Luwak coffee. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kopi_Luwak)

Basically some jungle cat in southeast asia selects the best and ripest coffee-berries and eats them, its digestive system only affects the beans a little (supposedly some enzymes change the taste in just the right delicious way). People then gather the beans from the - well - cat-shits, clean them and roast them a little. Ground, add water and you have Kopi Luwak.

It is the most expensive beverage in the world, around 500 pounds is produced each year - and it sells at around 600$ a pound!

Brown gold indeed.

[brkl]

I'll make you some for a lot less.

[baconian]

I'm off to make some coffee...

[miffy495]

I like the French press coffee, but I never really bother to make it. I usually sleep too late to make coffee before leaving the house, so I go to a nice little sparsely populated coffee shop in a corner at the back of the University of Calgary before class. Every time I go there, I walk past the Tim Horton's with its massive line and nothing special coffee and thank God that I discovered that little shop before I got into the habit of going to Timmy's. Better coffee, shorter line. Works for me.

As for the coffee at work, it's shit. There's no way around that. Still, it's enough to keep me going when I'm working a way early or way late shift, so that's all I ask of it.

Oh, and I usually only drink one cup a day when I drink it, but have been doing so since I was about 12 years old. I go without whenever I can as I don't want to become dependant, and most of the time (meaning 4 or 5 days out of the week) I don't drink any during the day. Still, I love the taste, so I'm not about to stop drinking it altogether.

[Marek]

I have to say that even when coffee is shit I live knowing that it could be much worse. When I was a younger and we went to visit my family in Poland, they'd put coffee in a cup and pour hot water over it. Not instant coffee. I don't know what to call it. The coffee didn't all dissolve into the water. The point was that somehow most of it stayed at the bottom of the cup. But if you drank too much you'd hit that layer of crap and be really sad.

[qdqwdd]

I'm not a fan of coffee, I never make it at home, I prefer chocolated milk in the morning, and whenever I drink coffee it's with milk and sugar...

[brkl]

Oh, how do you drink your coffee? I use milk (non-fat) and sugar, not a lot of either but I do need both. I can drink coffee without them, but only if I have to.

I go to this rather popular (although usually the lines aren't long) café at our university that's run by the Humanistics department. The coffee's not great, but it's ok and you can get fair trade coffee.

[Coldkill]

About Tea.

Tea contains catechins, a type of antioxidant. In fresh tea leaf, catechins can be up to 30% of the dry weight. Catechins are highest in concentration in white and green teas while black tea has substantially less due to its oxidative preparation.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tea

Antioxidants are particularly important in the context of organic chemistry and biology. All living organisms maintain a reducing environment inside their cells. All cells contain complex systems of antioxidants to prevent chemical damage to the cells' components by oxidation. These antioxidants include glutathione and ascorbic acid and are substrates for enzymes such as peroxidases and oxidoreductases.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antioxidant

Basically Tea helps you break down excess oxygen in your body which can oxidize and damage your cells.

Cold

[qdqwdd]

Oh, how do you drink your coffee? I use milk (non-fat) and sugar, not a lot of either but I do need both. I can drink coffee without them, but only if I have to.

I drink what we call "café con leche" (white coffee) with some sugar if it's in the morning and "café cortado" (coffee with a dash of milk) if it's afternoon/evening, and with ice in the summer.

Though I usually take it decaffeinated in the evening, otherwise I can't sleep... Here we're lucky because most bars/cafeterias have pretty good coffee, so no lines usually.

[Wrestlevania]

Oh, how do you drink your coffee?

Strong, with lots of full fat milk. Using 'Gold Top' (aka 'Half-and-Half') is pure heaven.

No sugar, though -- I've worked hard to become this bitter.

[miffy495]

Black. Since I was 12. I appear to be in the minority nowadays, but I think that coffee is at its best when it's on its own. Milk/cream/sugar/whatever can be really good in it, but still not quite as good as black coffee. With espresso, I go for americano so that I have a full cup, but no not-coffee contents in it aside from hot water.

[loonyboi]

I started drinking coffee when I was really young (like 10). For some reason my mother thought it would keep me calm.

Obviously, it didn't work.

I stopped drinking caffeine in '99, but before I did, I used to drink obscene amounts of very bad coffee all the time. Because I drank so much of it, I would get the cheapest instant crap I could get my hands on. My wife (then girlfriend) was over once and wanted some coffee, so I made her some using the method I always used...a giant soup spoon of crystals plus hot water.

She had half a sip and spit it out in disgust. That was my good ol' black sludge. I almost miss it.

Quitting caffeine was HARD. Like super freaky hard. Your body does NOT want to stop drinking caffeine. I was in absolute pain (seriously, PAIN!) for about three weeks. The headaches were murder, and my whole body ached.

After I survived that, I decided to give up smoking (another vice...I used to smoke 2 1/2 packs a day) and by comparison, it was quite easy. I quit cold turkey and haven't had a smoke in over seven years. Every year on the anniversary I calculate how much I would have spent on cigarettes had I still been smoking. As of October, it was over $31,000. But considering how much coffee goes for now, I suspect if I did the math on at least 32 ounces of coffee a day it might be even more.

Anyway, caffeine is an insidious thing. I'm much happier not to be a slave to it any more. When you give it up, you either become a morning person or hate life...thankfully, I became the former.