I started drinking coffee regularly a few weeks ago (that is, pretty much every morning when I’m home, though I’ve never actually brought myself to purchase a cup when away from home), primarily for medicinal reasons. I still don’t like the stuff that much, and can take or leave it. But one side effect I discovered, as a result of my latest dental visit, is that my teeth are much cleaner. I noticed that my cleaning was much faster than usual, and my hygienist told me that there was less to clean. I attribute this to the fact that I am brushing twice as often as I used to, because I feel a need to do so after drinking the coffee in the morning (I generally skip breakfast otherwise), partly to get rid of the after taste, and partly to prevent teeth staining. I was particularly motivated about the latter after seeing how hard it is to clean coffee stains from our white porcelain cups.
20 thoughts on “A New Benefit Of Coffee”
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Rand, I hope you aren’t drinking the mainstream crap like Yuban or Folgers. You would be doing yourself a disservice. One doesn’t need to go expensive, just pick up a good medium roast from Trader Joe’s or Coffee Bean (since you are in CA). Steer clear of the Starbucks charcoal roasts.
We use whole beans from Trader Joe’s or Costco, generally a French roast (I’ve been making coffee, including lattes, for her for years). She buys coffee from Starbucks, but not generally for home consumption. I’ve had coffee that people tell me is great. My response remains, “meh.” As I said, I drink it purely for medicinal purposes.
There’s also nothing like a good hot coffee enema to start the day off with a bang!
I used to think of coffee the same way you do, Rand; for medicinal purposes only (such as a pick-me-up during a long drive).
Then, during a long trip to Italy, I was introduced to espresso and one of the things it’s used to make: cappuccino.
My suggestion; if you find yourself at a good quality coffee place (Not a starbucks!) and you haven’t already tried it, give a well-made cappuccino a try.
I’m not a coffee drinker either but enjoy sweetened Cuban espresso. Might be worth a try if you don’t mind the caffeine.
I can’t imagine any point in drinking coffee without caffeine in it.
You will find that if you add enough sugar, cream, cream substitute, and flavored syrups, you can completely mask that nasty “coffee” taste.
I don’t think the taste is either “nasty” or good. I’m content to drink it as is, without anything else. I just don’t look forward to it.
I don’t like coffee.
What I do like though, very much, is espresso with heavy cream. If you don’t have problems with lactose or the taste of milkfat it makes for a delicious liquid breakfast – a good quick-pick-me-up with lots of fat for energy sustain (and little to no sugar for no crash vs. milk or half&half).
Even more delectable if you have some dark “drinking” chocolate to throw in for more flavor. TJs sometimes sells it in tins, they go fast.
I keep wishing there’d be a serious “gourmet” hot chocolate market. The coffee-bars tend to serve coffee-tasting chocolate (because it isn’t a separate machine usually). Sigh.
If you get the opportunity to go to Hong Kong, check out the Chocolate Library
The hot chocolate is divine, and the view is breathtaking. Be sure to make a pitstop at the watercloset on that floor too – the urinals are against the exterior wall and all window above the urinal looking SE over Kowloon and HK island. Crazy view for a bathroom.
I had a chem teacher who made coffee from distilled water–he claimed it reduced the stains on the pot.
My dentist says that tea stains teeth more than coffee.
Ya, tea is pretty bad. The Mythbusters did an episode about what stains your teeth the worst. IIRC, tea and white wine combo was the worst.
Rand – The fundamental deal is, coffee should taste like the fresh-ground beans smell, IE ambrosiacal, but it almost never does. The two main reasons are, burning the beans AKA “French Roast”, and “burning” the brew, which comes in two varieties: overextracting the wrong solubles by using water that’s too hot, and chemically altering the brewed coffee by maintaining it at too high a temperature.
You’re an engineer at heart, and also a realist – keep on brewing what your SO is used to, but experiment on the side. Get one of those melitta one-cup drip-cone brewers, and tinker. (You may have to mail-order it; I noticed they don’t seem to sell those in Cali any more lest inept Californians scald themselves – lawyers, presumably.)
For starters, French roast is burnt beans. Get a good medium roast. From Peet’s, I recommend Major Dickason’s Blend, or if you have an actual Peet’s store handy, New Guinea.
The whole point of coffee beans is to store then release volatiles in a controlled way. Maintain control – keep the beans frozen and sealed dry, and if you’re grinding more than one brew’s worth at a time, transfer the surplus to a sealed jar right away and keep that in the freezer also.
I don’t know the perfect water temperature for drip-brewing, but it’s well below sea-level boiling, and not too far from 5000-ft boiling. 212F will extract stuff from the beans that tastes like crap; cooler leaves that in the beans and gives you a higher proportion of the good stuff. (Harbor Freight has a DVM with a thermocouple cheap if you decide to be more scientific about it than I have so far.)
Even once it’s brewed perfectly, heating it to anything near a boil will quickly chemically alter it into acrid-tasting headache-inducer. (Even held at reasonable heat, brewed coffee will still go bad over an hour or so.) I solve this by just brewing one (more if I have company) cup at a time and drinking it right away.
Automatic-drip coffeemakers can be ok, IF they both brew with less-than-boiling water, and then maintain the hot plate at sufficiently-less-than-boiling temperature. Most don’t. Most are coffee assassins that either brew at boiling, boil on the hot plate, or both. Acrid-tasting headache juice… And there’s no way to tell, short of tests and experience with a particular coffeemaker. Far easier to just use a manual drip cone and control the conditions.
Good luck!
We use a Cuisinart autodrip with a burr grinder built in. I don’t know what the brewing temperature is, but the plate doesn’t boil it. It shuts off automatically after two hours, but I generally drink within one.
But you’ve obviously confused me with someone who cares enough about coffee to be willing to invest that kind of time and money into improving it. I think I’ll just continue to choke it down as is. As I said, I’ve tasted coffee that others reliably inform me is great, and I’m always underwhelmed. My attitude toward coffee is that it’s the opposite of sex — even when it’s good, it’s bad.
Suit yourself. But you’re the one complaining it doesn’t taste good, and you’re explicitly committing one of the common errors – burnt beans AKA “French Roast” – and very probably committing another, brewing with overly hot water. A name brand is no guarantee the temp’s right.
About 90% of the people touting “great coffee” haven’t a clue – the default translation for “this is great coffee” should be “it has LOTS of caffeine and isn’t bad enough to immediately give me a headache.” Most of them probably think Jolt Cola or Red Bull is great too.
But, if the taste really doesn’t motivate you and you’re in it strictly for the health benefits, it may be worth doing it right anyway, as it seems a reasonable inference that variations that make it taste worse and/or actually induce a headache quite possibly are less healthy in the long run too. Your sense of taste evolved as a defense mechanism, after all.
I’m not so much complaining that it doesn’t taste good as pointing out that I really don’t care that much how it tastes. I’ve never had any bad effects (headache, jumpiness, etc.) that I’ve heard can be caused by it, and for that matter, I haven’t experienced any good ones either (e.g., increased alertness). It really seems to have little obvious effect on either my well being or taste buds. I am drinking it purely on faith, and really have little desire to delve further into the matter. Just doing what I’ve been doing for her for years, except in greater quantities, is about as much effort as I’m willing to put forth. Also consider the possibility that it affects you differently (in both flavor and other effects) than it affects others.
“Also consider the possibility that it affects you differently (in both flavor and other effects) than it affects others.”
Rand, you’re the one that brought coffee up in a way that made it clear you lack certain useful knowledge on the subject. OK, you’ve now made it clear you didn’t bring it up because you wanted to learn more. Cool, it’s a free country.
But there’s no need to be insulting. Of farking COURSE things sometimes affect different people in different ways. And you suck an egg by holding one end up, making a hole in it, covering it with a fingertip, inverting, making another hole, etc.
Sorry, didn’t mean to be insulting. But at some point, you can stop tugging on the horse’s neck toward water (OK, in this case, coffee) in which he’s clearly uninterested.
I drink it black during the week while at work but on the weekends at home I trick it up. After I read Gary Taubes, he recommended using heavy cream instead of half and half. Walmart’s Great Value brand heavy cream actually has 0 carbs. Plus the fact it’s, well heavier, than half and half it takes far less of it to get your coffee, uh creamed up. But one thing I’ve found when drinking it black is it has to be freshly brewed. If it sits then the dirt flavors start to come through. But right out the brew I can catch some citrus notes and piquant tones. Though I fortunately work in an area where the coffee procurer actually made an effort to get something people will actually drink. The coffee supplier even came in with about 20 different strains and had a tasting and a vote to see which one was the winner. Unfortunately a dark roast won out overall. It’s a shame because light roasts just have so much more vibrant and lively flavors. But old school coffee drinkers just want their ole’ cup of joe burnt to an inch of its flavorful life.