How do you like your coffee

[tjs282]

FTR, I wrote the following before un-hiding the text in Post#1...

As far as coffee goes, I'm just a filthy casual. Not any kind of connoisseur at all, don't really care how it's made (though I do prefer fresh to instant).

I drank coffee milkshakes as a teen, but never coffee per se. Started drinking it (instant) at college, after we ran out of teabags in the student-paper office one time. Drank (tea or) instant coffee for most of my twenties in the various places I worked — never drank coffee at home — because that was what was on offer, but could and can only drink it as "British Forces standard issue" (as a later boss described it): lotsa milk, lotsa sugar (~2 flat teaspoons), i.e. pretty much still a warmed-up coffee-flavoured milkshake (which also means it's still just about drinkable if I accidentally let it go cold, ooh the horror).

My current employer (Germany-based company) provides us peons with coffee-beans and milk, but not tea-bags, so I started drinking filter-coffee at work a couple of years back, to the same recipe. Usually one cup per morning is my limit, though I'll occasionally have a second in the afternoon if there's any left in the thermos (more for the sugar than the caffeine, though) — but given that I drink it with a third to a half milk, 2 cups for me is like 1 cup for any normal coffee-drinker anway...

My wife drinks mainly black tea for preference, but (even though she normally avoids dairy products like the plague) also acquired an inexplicable taste for lattes at some point since we moved back to Germany in 2006. So she bought us an electric espresso-jug a couple of years back, plus a succession of various milk-foaming devices of increasing cost/complexity, for weekend-afternoon lattes. Needless to say, I'm usually the one who has to make them...

While I love the smell of fresh-brewed (real) coffee, I still can't drink it black (unless it's Turkish-style coffee).

So yeah, having (now) read the hidden text, that research seems to predict my personality quite accurately...

 

[warpus]

Tim Hortons is baffling to me. They've got dominant market share, and their coffee (and everything else they sell) is just so, so bad.

It's a religion, to a lot of people Tim's is just a part of the day. They don't think about it, they just do it, it's how it's always been done, etc.

We used to have 18 Tim's locations here at work. Yep, 18. Every single building had at least one, it was nuts. Still have about 15.

 

[Uberfrog]

At home/work I tend to drink unsweetened black coffee made with an Aeropress. I got one years ago, and it hands down beats a cafetière for taste and ease of cleaning. In the UK you can get quite a lot of variety in packaged ground coffees and I enjoy trying different origins and styles. The alternative in the office kitchen is a bean-to-cup espresso machine, which is hit-and-miss depending on how recently it's done a rinse cycle, or instant, which is pretty grim.

If I go to a coffee shop I'll get a flat white more often than not. It's nice and strong while still having a satisfying mouthfeel from the frothed milk. Will also try a long black, espresso or filter if there's an interesting guest coffee available. I never add sugar, except sometimes for Turkish coffee.

If it's iced coffee, which I've been having more in the recent heatwave, I need a little bit of milk and sugar, unless it's an exceptional hipster cold brew, then I might be able to enjoy it black.

 

[civvver]

I love coffee, but it doesn't love me. In my early 20s I drank it all the time at work, but I was constantly getting stomach aches. I quit coffee and they went away. Now I have acid reflux which is mainly triggered by coffee and wine. I think there's a special acid or something in coffee I don't digest right. If you ever look up why your pee smells weird after drinking coffee it's from some acid your body doesn't digest. I get my caffeine fix from diet coke and diet dew now which for some reason my stomach is fine with.

So it sucks cus I love the taste of coffee. I would typically drink it black, but american coffee isn't that good. The best kind is the European kind like from a nespresso machine. It's not espresso, but it's like a stronger coffee and has some kind of froth on it though it doesn't add milk or cream. The few times I've ordered coffee in Germany and France it's always tasted like that.

Barring that I like regular with half and half. Mcdonalds actually makes a very decent cup of coffee.

I do like caramel coffee stuff like from starbucks or panera's frozen one is really good, but that's like a dessert and way too expensive to drink regularly.

 

[MaryKB]

I used to always love drinking my coffee just regular black, and sometimes with milk mixed in. I haven't had coffee for like over three years now, I was reading about how caffeine withdrawal affects you and decided I didn't want to be dependent. Oh dear it was really, really hard to get off, especially like those first two weeks, but after a month I felt better and I've felt just wonderful since then. I wake up now every morning really ready to go, like so totally alert right away at 6am, and I don't feel I could go back. When I was drinking coffee I'd always get like a rapid heartbeat that just made me feel absolutely miserable, like something was wrong.

I'll drink a cup of earl grey tea once in a while now, and sometimes when my sister visits, or I visit her, she and I will go out and I'll have decaffeinated coffee with a little milk.