Ahira's Hangar

One of the most marvelous substances known to mankind!

Wakes you up (at least briefly) no matter how over-worked or tired you might be!

Poll question:

How do you prefer your caffeine???coffee, baby! coffee all the way!!!!tea (hot or iced)edible, in chocolatecold soft drinks like cola or mountain dewenergy drinksShow results ******************************************************

Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
<i></i>

It's sad to say that I can't genuinely wake up until my second cup. I'm very partial to double cappucinos too... *****
Before, you are wise; after, you are wise. In between you are otherwise.
Fravashi saying (from the formularies of Osho the Fool) <i></i>

In the winter I love hot tea and hot chocolate, but in the summer I drink pop, or when very desperately tired - Monster Low Carb energy drinks. ******************************************************

Our lives are the songs that sing the universe into existence.~David Zindell
<i></i>

Vault Zero, lately. ________________
I wanna feel the metamorphosis and cleansing I've endured within my shadow. Change is coming. Now is my time. Listen to my muscle memory. Contemplate what I've been clinging to. -Tool, "Forty-Six & Two" <i></i>

Mmmmm....I love coffee.

I used to have it first thing in the morning, but my empty stomach doesn't care for that approach anymore . So now my first caffeinated beverage of the day is hot tea with milk. I have my coffee a little later, after I've had my breakfast. "Does the walker choose the path, or the path the walker?"<i></i>

So, I bought a French press coffeemaker yesterday:



It was only $11 at Stokes, one of those kitchen/cookware specialty stores.
Pretty sweet deal versus a deluxe model I saw at a department store going for $40!

For beans, I bought a medium roast blend from Second Cup, my favorite coffee hangout.

Had my first cup today and it was very good. Had some cinnamon sugar donuts to go with it.

Instead of spending more money for a coffee grinder, I used my Magic Bullet mixer.

This method of brewing coffee is so fun that I may never use a percolator again. Well, not a home, anyway. I still have my 1-cup coffeemaker at work, which is perfect there.

I bought an unused/unopened French Press at a garage sale several years ago for $1.00, but have yet to use it...
This might encourage me to break it out.

...for some reason I've never seen this thread before, even as mod.
Best cast my vote in the poll!

Test, been having problems.

For long periods of my life I was not a big coffee drinker, although like most Americans raised during the 1960s and 1970s a huge fan of sodas ('pepsi generation', 'things go better with coke'). However, in the midwest and parts of the south there's a smaller coffee chain that called headquatered in Minniapolis. Some years back they had a mid-summer's day special of free small coolers (their version of frappucino) and I became a big fan of their chain. Directly afterward of getting the free sample, I tried their cold pressed brewed ice coffee and now I'm hooked. It's now regular dripped coffees, iced americanos, chai tea lattes, etc. There's one in walking distance of my house and when the urge strikes me I'll walk to their store.

Explaining my earlier avoidance of coffees, well when I was a child my parents would frequently brew with the staple american percolator with grocery store brands or regular brands of the day (Folger's, Maxwell House, etc.) compared to good coffee not very appealing. Then in during the time I was in HS, the popular drip maker Mr. Coffee became an American kitchen staple. Additionally, my parents at the time tended to brew their coffee at less than recommended levels. So the family's coffee was weakly brewed light roasted robustas beans mass grown in Brazil brewed in an American percolator. When I was in college I got to sample from an Italian fellow some Vienna Roast from an Italian Market, brewed on a Italian percolator, very good. Thus starts my search for coffees I would like. I bought an Italian percolator right while I was still in college, but using grocery brand light roast robustas blends, could not get the effect I wanted. After some thought about the manner, I've concluded the tastes I liked were attributal to arabica beans and dark roasting. So we arrive at coffee drinking.

Regarding caffeine content. I did some research on the interwebs and found the following dark roasts have average less caffeine than light roasts, teas have maybe around 40% - 60% content of coffees, and regular caffeinated soda (exluding Jolts and their ilk) are about 50% of teas and hot chocolates come out at a fraction of teas.

That's a cool setup, MW. I never thought about being able to grind beans in a food processor, but it makes perfect sense. My ex-father-in-law swore by his coffee grinder. He claimed that it wasn't so much the freshness of the beans as it was how much time had elapsed since they were ground.

taras, my parents also preferred their coffee dishwater strength. I learned to like a stronger brew as I got older, even before Starbucks came on the scene. Interesting that darker roasts have less caffeine than lighter roasts -- I guess the roasting process burns the chemical out of the bean?

This was a tough poll because it only let me pick one thing. I start my day with a cup of Irish Breakfast tea at home. At work we have K-cup machines; I usually get a cup of medium-roast coffee when I get in. Then later in the day, I have a diet cola (Diet Coke with Lime, if I can get it) with lunch.

Of course, chocolate's good any time.

Oh yeah -- I was gonna say that while I was in Hawaii, I got a package of a Kona coffee blend. 10% Kona, the rest arabica. It's a light roast. But it makes some mighty fine coffee.

Might want to check out some Ethiopian varieties, Caribou blends many of the blends with Ethiopian beans and they're usually very good.

Excellent post earlier, taras! Thanks for your input. Yeah, I saw an online how-to video on coffee buying that warned (cheekily) of the inferiority of robusta beans vs. arabica. I'd like to try iced coffee at home. Iced cappucino is another. I love Tim Horton's version; it's an awesome summer treat.

My parents weren't coffee drinkers - I imagine that in China, tea was more their thing. I came around to coffee fairly recently, some time between the late '80s and early '90s. Before then, the closest I came were those "International House" or whatever coffee beverages. Don't recall exactly when and where I had my first ever cup of coffee, but it was most likely at Second Cup. It was good that I got introduced to coffee as properly brewed by professionals, or barristas as the lingo goes.

I believe my first try at making coffee was with the instant stuff. Ugh. Never again. It was more like instant crap.

I voted coffee all the way in the poll, if we're talking purely about the caffeine rush. But I certainly enjoy tea, hot or iced. And who doesn't like chocolate? But I don't eat it for the caffeine content...I love chocolate cuz it's CHOCOLATE. Soda is more a junk calorie drink that I really should cut out of my diet, but I'm afraid I sold my soul to sugar long before I met coffee. Diet soda just doesn't do it for me. No offense to diet drink aficionados, but I personally can't stand the stuff. To me, that aspartame taste is possibly the only thing worse than instant coffee!

Kona is a light roast, you say? I might look around for it. I assume I don't actually need to go to Hawaii to get it...but it's cool that you got it direct from the source.

The brand I got was Hawaiian Isles Kona Coffee Co. That was the blended light roast. I also picked up a bag of 100% Kona for one of my bosses, which is a "dark estate roast". I suspect the classification of dark roast or light roast has to do with the length of time the beans are roasted (longer = darker), not with the type of bean. But hey, I could be wrong....

Oh, the brand I got for my boss is Haole Boy Coffee. I got it mostly for the label -- it's a drawing of a seriously jittery surfer dude who's holding a mug of coffee in one hand and giving the thumbs-up with the other.

And I totally agree with you about instant coffee, MW. Altho I had I cup of Starbucks VIA at a friend's house a couple of weeks ago, and it actually tasted like coffee instead of like mud.

Starbucks VIA? Don't know about that.
You're right, the classification has to do with the length of time roasted, not the type of bean. I wasn't thinking straight.

I'm having some more of my French press coffee. No, I shouldn't be drinking coffee at 6:00 pm, but I don't care. I'm tired from a stupid day at work and want some fresh Second Cup Paradiso brew to pick me up.

One of my friends has been out to Hawaii a couple of times. She swears by a brand grown on the Big Island called Badass Coffee Company. She originally brought it back with her on the plane, now orders it from the company via the web.