I don’t fit in any of the categories. I don’t drink coffee - every time I’ve tried it I found incredibly bitter and burnt. I don’t drink tea, and I rarely drink diet cola. The tap water here is superb.
A pinch of salt takes away a lot of the bitterness, especially when it’s coffee made in huge quantities, strong enough to stand your spoon up straight in, eg Navy coffee. I’ll often do it if it’s a really dark roast.
Having spent a lot of time on large ships I enjoy coffee that can be used to strip paint, kind of like diesel and salt air it’s comforting and easily keeps you up at 3am during a boring watch.
1 Like
Maybe I am just a masochist, but I’d be willing to try a Coffee Port made by anyone ITB from here. Apothic Brew was just poorly executed. I will leave my CT note to do the talking.
FWIW, I learned to drink coffee out of necessity, and it was evil Folgers dreck in the department coffee club in 1988. My current coffee preferences and wine preference have zero correlation…zero.
I started drinking coffee when I was 50, only because I was already brewing my wife’s morning coffee. Since then I’ve been drinking two cups a day of black coffee around breakfast. Rarely more, rarely less. I quickly moved to grinding my own beans, and I don’t experiment much with sources any more. For close to 10 years I’ve alternated between two single origin coffees with slightly different roast levels. My wife doesn’t care so she drinks whatever is in the coffee pot - with skim milk.
I generally won’t drink coffee that has milk in it.
I used to eat Ben & Jerry’s Coffee Coffee Buzz Buzz sometimes but I quit eating ice cream about 5 years ago.
I used to roast my own coffee for a number of years and the varietals and terrior of the coffees make them unique, much like wine.
Adding milk and sugar to coffee simply masks the origin notes of the bean, which isn’t something I’m using looking for.
Tea isn’t something I actively seek out, but will drink it on occasion.
I’m about a 50-50 split between cortados and light roast espressos with no milk or sugar.
So I guess I should put “I prefer my hot coffee black but will occasionally drink it with milk/creamer and sugar as a treat”?
1 Like
hate coffee unless it has a ton of sweetner - even then it’s a last choice. I also don’t require caffeine to operate. I just drink Matcha in the morning as an appetite suppressant
2 Likes
Isn’t this really a true macchiato, as opposed to those mini-cappucini that get served up all over the USA and, horror of horrors, in many places across Italy?
I only drink coffee black, yet most of my wine collection is Napa
I like cold brew. Flawed poll.
1 Like
When you say coffee, do you mean that dark, somewhat burnt-flavored water that some people like to drink, or do you mean real coffee from an espresso machine or a moka pot or maybe a French or Aero press?
Because if it’s the former (things like drip filters, pour overs, and the like) I can answer your poll, but you won’t get useful information from my answer.
My preferred coffee is single-origin (single farm) Arabica beans (preferably Caturra or Limani or sometimes Típica) grown in the Caribbean, Sun-Dried or “Honey-process” and roasted to medium and then brewed in an espresso machine or moka pot. With milk (at a ratio of 2 to 1) and sugar yes (and sometimes a pinch of salt depending on my mood), but I can drink an espresso shot too.
1 Like
Milk or cream, no sweetener, often espresso based, but will on rare occasions drink black and like straight espresso on occasion. So yeah, flawed poll.
I find this conversation somewhat hilarious. To a coffee snob (or aficionado), this poll is the equivalent of asking if you like your red wine dry, with some sweetness, with a bit of mega-purple added, and with oak chips added. In fact, I would like to see the inverse poll asked on whatever the coffee-equivalent forum of WB is. 
There’s a tremendous amount of complexity in coffee, from brewing method (a v60 pourover would be the bare minimum; some purists will only go for aeropress at 190-195 degrees brewed for 120 seconds precisely; a french press is the equivalent of flipping a bottle of 40 year old barolo upside down before serving) to processing method (dry process vs. wet process; length of cherry fermentation), and bean varietal (arabica of course, but there are very notable differences between caturra [more crisp, lively citrus], bourbon [earthier, nuttier] and gesha [can be intensely floral; tropical], as well as an emerging trend for artisan production of robusta beans in Vietnam, not dissimilar to the care that some American producers have taken with previously forsaken grapes (mr. sabelli-frisch and mission/flame tokay for example; or Vermont producers with Hybrid varietals).
My own personal preferences, while I appreciate many varietals and methods, I strongly prefer filter (v60 is acceptable, brewed at 200-205f; aeropress at 190-195f is a cleaner cup but a bit fussy; Japanese or Belgian siphon is the best but good luck getting it right at home), with wet-process caturra and gesha being my favorite beans; especially from high-quality growers in Burundi/Rwanda/Ethiopian highlands.
I’ve roasted my own beans for many years, but honestly, they’re not nearly as good as those produced in a commercial micro-roaster by a good shop.
I can’t say that I appreciate the differences quite as much as some others (or as I appreciate wines), but it’s probably not far (if at all) behind grapes and tea in terms of expressing varietal, terroir, and processing. I don’t love Starbucks, but i’ll drink it; unlike a glass of Apothik red, which shudder.
For anyone that is curious, a great place to start exploring the world of coffee terroir is the subscription at Sey Coffee. But a proper burr grinder, kettle, scale and filter set up are a necessary starting point… otherwise you’re performing the coffee equivalent of drinking your Chambolle out of a warm mug with coffee residue.
7 Likes
Jesus that’s a lot of caffeine!
Triple expresso latte with milk, a bit of sugar and a splash of creamer. Keeps me running all day!!
What?! I’m very confused…
1 Like
A french press leaves tons of particulate, almost goadingly so, and muddies the flavors beyond all recognition. It hits you powerfully like a slap in the face, and people are told that it’s a good coffee; much in the same way that the masses are told that a triple oak aged cheap chardonnay that tastes like sucking on a 2x4 is good. Maybe it doesn’t matter with a French roast that tastes like ashes anyways, burned to a crisp and obliterating all flavors, but if you’re trying to pour a cup of coffee that reveals the fundamentally terroir/processing-driven clarity of aromas and flavors, texture of dissolved solids, etc… then it’s not so good.
1 Like
Wait, no one else here is on the allocation list for MacDonald’s propriety single origin coffee beans? I hear it’s more exclusive than their wine but you have to sign a form stating you’ll only drink it black.
Not with the right grind (which is admittedly hard to achieve).