update on the Nick situation, plus thoughts on coffee

[edenfalling]

He told our parents last night. Dad took it well. Mom is much more ??? about it, but they were both very loving and supportive. :)

I will probably end up talking to Mom about stuff within the next few days. I'm not sure how that conversation will go. A lot of processing, probably.

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Anyway! On to the shitposting segment of this post. Today's random word pulled from the February Shitposting topic list is coffee.

I don't drink coffee. I am, however, pretty good at brewing coffee. I can also grind coffee, talk semi-knowledgeably about coffee varieties, and recommend coffee blends based on people's expressed likes and dislikes. This is because the smoke shop, where I worked for 8.5 years, was also a low-rent coffee shop -- by which I mean we sold coffee (both beans and brewed), but we didn't have tables and chairs for people to sit and drink it. We were strictly a to-go place.

I have also brewed coffee as an unpaid teenage usher at the Shakespeare Theater of New Jersey for a couple summers in the 90s, as food service staff at an assisted living home (my college summer job), and at Not the IRS. But I still don't drink it.

When I was a kid I figured I'd have to learn to drink coffee when I grew up, but it turns out that actually tea has become more readily available so I never needed to bother. Nonetheless, coffee is something that I could teach myself to drink... unlike beer. I don't know what it is about some unpleasant flavors that makes me think, "This is nasty but I could get accustomed to it if I wanted to bother," versus, "This is nasty and I will never think otherwise." But there IS a difference, and for me coffee and beer exemplify the two sides of that divide.

So those are my thoughts on coffee.

Comments

[violsva]

Your thoughts on coffee reminded me that it is teatime.

I'm glad things are going well with Nick and your parents!

[edenfalling]

Hurrah for tea!

And I am glad as well. I was pretty sure they would go well, but it's good to have confirmation. :)

[alexseanchai]

I'm glad you and your brother have the good sort of parents. :)

[edenfalling]

I have always been grateful for them. :)

[redwolf]

I went the other way with beer and coffee. I still dislike the taste of coffee, but I do like some beers. But then beers probably win that one due to the massive variance in styles, so you're bound to find one you like sooner or later, where coffee all tastes the same to me.

I used to walk past a brewery every day on the way to work. Initially I found the smell rank, but I guess I got used to it and ended up liking it. Odd.

[edenfalling]

For me, the problem is that underneath all the variants, beer still tastes of beer. And it's that fundamental beer-flavor that I find foul. *shrug*

Coffee is just bitter, not foul, and one can get used to bitterness. I used to find the scent of brewing coffee somewhat nauseating when I was younger (though I have always liked the scent of coffee beans), but I got over that while working at the smoke shop and now find it rather homey.

[jedibuttercup]

I'm glad that things are going well with your family!

It's probably genetic taste variation, on the coffee vs. beer front. My best friend says any beer has an underlying flavor unpleasantly reminiscent of earwax to her, and she detests most red wines as well, though she likes whites. My mom has very narrow tastes in red wine, and favors porters when it comes to beer; she finds a lot of whites and most paler beers unpleasantly sour, and stouts are *too* dark for her, she can taste the charring on the hops; and though she likes the smell of coffee she can only drink it if it's diluted with milk or cocoa or something. *shrug*

I'm lucky, I guess; none of it tastes gross to me at all, and I'm kind of fascinated by sampling all the different available flavors! I'm like my dad that way.

[edenfalling]

Yeah, there's an underlying "beer" flavor that is just fundamentally unpleasant to me. I wonder sometimes if it's like cilantro, which to some people apparently tastes like soap while other people think it's delicious. (For the record, I think cilantro tastes like muddy grass or grassy mud, whichever. Which is not as terrible as soap, but still nothing I'm particularly interested in eating. *wry*)

[krait]

Congrats to Nick! Glad things went pretty smoothly.

I'm in the same "I could learn to like this, but why bother?" boat regarding coffee. Perfectly delightful teas exist; why teach myself to drink something else that (going on the example of my parents) I'll probably have to stop drinking a couple decades later?

I do not know how to make coffee at all, because my parents had an automatic coffee maker and I don't live with anyone who likes coffee. I was oddly pleased when I randomly ran across a diagram of how a coffeemaker works, though; it's a pretty nifty and compact mechanism!

(Beer is also disgusting and definitely not on the 'could learn to drink this' list. It smells like unneutered-dog urine, ugh.)

[edenfalling]

I was pretty sure they would go smoothly, but 99% sure is not the same as 100%, so I am also glad not to be worrying anymore.

I am sort of distantly fascinated by the sheer variety of coffee brewing methods people have come up with over the years. Conversely, I think there are really only two teamaking methods -- steep leaves or whisk powder -- and neither of those mechanizes nearly as well.

[harmony_lover]

I am SO glad things went well with Nick and your parents. That's wonderful. :)

Re: beer vs. coffee: I have never learned to drink coffee, though I love the smell. It always tastes bitter to me at the end, and it upsets my stomach. Beer I did not drink and didn't like for years, but now I have found some that I can drink and really do enjoy. I agree with Redwolf that just the sheer variety of beer makes it easier to find something you like eventually.

My spouse, on the other hand, LOVES beer, but can't drink anything too hoppy. So that genetic marker that makes cilantro taste like soap? It's the SAME genetic marker that makes hops taste like soap. Anything on the "lots of hops" end of the scale is awful to my spouse, because it's literally like washing your mouth out with soap.

[edenfalling]

I am also glad! :)

I didn't know that about hops and cilantro. How fascinating! I need to run that past my dad, since he has the cilantro=soap gene, but I don't recall him having similar issues with beer.

[harmony_lover]

See what your dad says! I'm curious, too. Spouse is a biologist, and got curious about why both hops and cilantro tasted like soap, and so did some research. But it would be fascinating to know if it doesn't affect all people equally. :)

[edenfalling]

His reply:

I've never known which beers are "hoppy" and which not.

I have never thought there was a soapy taste to any beer I have tried, though I certainly have thought various beers have various tastes, for better or worse in some cases but in others just different.

Cheers,
Dad

[harmony_lover]

Oh, interesting! So apparently the "soap" gene does affect some people differently in regard to beer. I wonder why? There's a genetic science paper in the making. Thank you for letting me know. :)