40 thoughts on “Coffee”

  3. I love coffee, and I drink it for the taste not the caffeine since I always drink decaffeinated. The writer of that article is an idiot if he really believes the crap he is spewing.

    1. Buzfeed is not exactly the Oracle at Delphi…

      Which, come to think of it is an analogy they probably would not understand.

      1. I spent entirely too long trying to develop a taste for coffee when I was younger, and I still dislike the stuff intensely, but this article strikes me as something written by a crybaby.

        1. I don’t know if I “like” coffee but I do enjoy it. After I started drinking it, I noticed my palate accepted other types of food like asparagus, which I also do not “like” but occasionally enjoy. Its weird.

  5. Matthew Inman (writer of ‘The Oatmeal’) does a much better job with that sort of rant, because he takes the time to draw his own illustrations, rather than just using Shutterstock and MS Paint. Many others do the same thing, also much better than that writer.

    And, Inman is at least somewhat funny.

    1. I like The Oatmeal. He and I share a similar sense of humor, and I enjoy his illustrations. He also can laugh at himself, which I find endearing.

  6. Coffee has a certain barnyard/outhouse aroma. I’ve been around coffee snobs who have said that everyone, even non-drinkers, love the smells they generate.

    Then again, the winter’s elk and bison droppings in Yellowstone geothermal areas take on a distinctly sweet caramel aroma as they slowly cook.

    (And one of the sure signs that the ground in an area there is heating up is when the trees die from the heat from below, the roots cook, and the area smells like maple syrup. If that suddenly happens to hundreds of acres of forest, that’s when you can start taking those “the caldera’s about to blow” reports seriously.)

    1. There must be an evolutionary reason for one-trial learning to avoid food that made you sick. Those berries on that tree look tasty, let’s eat some, oh, my stomach is churning, berries, I get sick even thinking of eating those things.

      I had the stomach flu a lot as a kid — maybe as you get older your immune system shrugs more stuff off. Anyway, I was given an empty coffee can to stick my face into “just in case”, an empty coffee can permeated with the odor of stale, rancid ground coffee, does anyone buy coffee already ground anymore in a large tin can anymore?

      Sorry, but just the thought of coffee makes me sick to my stomach. I just cannot choke that fluid down. I just spent to much time sucking in air through an empty tin coffee can, and evolution.

  7. I used to work with a couple of guys who eschewed the office coffee pot and would only drink some very special coffee they would grind themselves. I always thought it smelled like fresh cow manure – which, if you’re a country boy, isn’t such a bad smell in the big scheme of things. But I wouldn’t want to drink it.

  8. Back when we did not have artificial light and had schedules which were regulated by the sun people did not need to take uppers and downers like coffee and camomile quite as much.

  9. There are coffee-drinking countries that have gone to the Moon, explored the very edges of our Solar System (maybe even beyond), and there are tea drinkers like Britain, China, Russia…..

  10. I love coffee and the article is nuts:

    I drink it black – so there goes the whole “mask it with sugar” argument.

    I liked it from the very first sip I ever had – so there goes the “acquired tastes are bad” meme.

    The article is crap.

    2. I think you’re taking it a little too seriously. Anyway, different people have different tastes. Coffee tastes terrible, regardless of how it’s prepared.

  12. I used to live on coffee but then a few years ago I became allergic. If I drink a quarter cup I end up pacing around in a sweat for three hours wondering if I should go to the ER.

    Anyway, here’s my Hamlet poem again. I wrote it before I was allergic. Alas.

    To brew, or not to brew: that is the question:
    Whether ’tis nobler in the morn to suffer
    The yawns and harrows of a bleary waking,
    Or to make urns a’black to shake the slumbers,
    And by imbibing end them? To sip: to sleep
    No more; and by a sleep to say we end
    The heartache and the thousand nighttime shocks
    That sleep is known for, ’tis a stimulation
    Devoutly to be wish’d. To brew, to steep;
    To steep: perchance to steam: ay, where’s my mug;
    For aft’ that cup of joe what dream remains
    When we have stirred and slurped the coffee oil,
    Cupped in our paws: there’s the respect
    That makes a frothing cup of Café au lait;
    For who could spare the whip’t and airy cream,
    The Espresso’s song, the scent of Arabica,
    The grounds of spent wet love, the brew’s delay.
    The insolence of instant and the burn
    That patient merit makes of too hurried taste,
    So he himself might his craving forsake
    Lest a burnt piehole? Who would waking bear,
    With grumbled breath under a drowsy eye,
    But that the dread of dozing at the wheel,
    The commuter’s mortuary from whose urns
    No coffee mug refills, strengthens the will
    And makes us rather brew those beans we have
    Than drive to others that we know not of?
    Thus caffeine does make addicts of us all;
    And thus the doctor’s urge of abnegation
    Is sipped o’er with a pale afterthought,
    And resolutions of great sincerity
    With this first cup their firmness goes away,
    And lose the name of action. –Perc you now!
    The rare Arabica! Drip! For thy piquancy
    Be in my dreams remembered.

    1. Today’s coffee isn’t like the coffee people used in the 60’s. It’s more potent, which can lead to reactions not seen in the coffee users of those days. Back then, people could drink coffee all day but see no adverse affects besides being a little hungry and tired. Today, coffee users get far more caffeine from just a single sip than they did drinking an entire cup. For society, this means dealing with increased rates of accidents, psychotic episodes, and people who are incapable of leaving their couch.

      1. Wasn’t there what because a cult film called “Refill Madness” shown on college campuses?

  14. “It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion. It is by the beans of Java that thoughts acquire speed, the hands acquire shakes, the shakes become a warning. It is by caffeine alone I set my mind in motion.”

  15. In Japan, my friends would laugh when I recoiled from the smell of natto (think soiled diaper.) Without realizing it, I exacted my revenge one day by eating blue cheese in front of one of them. They could not believe anyone could eat something so foul.

  16. I only drink one cup of coffee a day, if I need more caffeine than that I take a proton pill. Actually a breath mint laced with caffeine, but some here must remember Roger Ramjet (Hero of Our Nation).

    I found the comments saying coffee has barnyard/outhouse odors interesting, as this is the aroma I associate with South American coffees. Due to clever marketing, Columbian coffee became the gold standard in the US (remember Juan Valdez?). Coffees of other origins have different smell/taste, probably why Hawaiian Kona gained its niche. Single-source Ethiopian coffees such as Sidamo always seemed best to me, as it has a distinctive sour tang not found in other sources.

    The fact is, humans and coffee both originated in the same part of Africa, and I wonder if their co-evolution didn’t contribute to the origin of human intelligence and the eventual domination of later exo-African hominids over other subspecies. Coffee cherries have caffeine and are directly edible, the seeds (beans) merely being more transportable.

      1. Maybe you’re immune to caffeine the way some people are to heroine. I find caffeine a mild stimulant. It used to keep me awake in dull IT meetings, and now serves to make me a bit ore attentive driving on country roads. But I may be immune to the addictive properties of nicotine. I quite a 15-year 2 pack a daycigarette habit without anything I could describe as withdrawal symptoms.

    2. The fact is, humans and coffee both originated in the same part of Africa, and I wonder if their co-evolution didn’t contribute to the origin of human intelligence and the eventual domination of later exo-African hominids over other subspecies.

      This is a good question and some quick googling for archaeology type stuff didn’t turn up anything. There is the theory that agriculture arose because of beer and some evidence to support that but I haven’t seen the same examination of coffee. How far back does the use of this plant go in forms other than coffee?

      The quick googling provides a lot of links but the earliest uses all seem to be in the last 3,000 years or so. I am sure there is better info out there but its harder to find because of search rankings for such a popular drink.

      1. It’s just a pet theory of mine, and I’m not an anthropologist. Seems reasonable, at least. One of the ways the google-fu fails is looking up terms compounded of common words. I ran Bing for “coffee cherry recipes” just for fun. Apparently cherry coffee cake is quite popular.

        1. This one from PBS was interesting.

          Early on, the fruit were mixed with animal fat to create a protein rich snack bar. At one point, the fermented pulp was used to make a wine-like concoction; incidentally, a similar beverage was made from the cacao fruit, before the advent of chocolate, which goes to show that humans are especially adept at finding new ways to imbibe.

          It is like bulletproof coffee.

          The article doesn’t say how early coffee was used as a food. I read a fair amount of anthropology “news” but I haven’t seen articles about finding coffee residue on pottery shards or stone tools. It must be out there though and if it isn’t? Good project for some aspiring PHD student. It might not even involve any field work, just testing existing artifacts.

  17. The point is that coffee is a drug.
    Alcohol as in beer, is also also drug.

    I don’t think large bureaucracies should make drugs.
    And they aren’t very good at making music, either.
    The world would better without large bureaucracies,
    and world would be diminished without drugs.

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