I first started on coffee around the age of 9 or 10 when I would go for a 5:00 AM breakfast at Archer City Cafe with my rancher grandfather after we had already spent at least three hours laying eyes on each and every head of cattle he owned. Since that time I have never dared drink my coffee any way but black lest he return from the grave to haunt me. The Archer Cafe served "cowboy coffee'. (The coffee is ready to drink when it was strong enough to float a horseshoe.) Later on that turned into Navy coffee (I had been on board ship for three months before I discovered that coffee cup was not permanently grafted onto the Chief Petty Officers' arm along with the stripes.) The best coffee was always in the Chief's mess and much better than we were served in the Wardroom.
Today I confess to being a Starbucks addict to the point I bought stock in the company. (Hopefully my investment will recoup part of what I spend there.) Personally I like my coffee the way I like my scotch — single bean and single malt. In other words no blends. My preferred coffees are of African origin and in general Ethiopian Sidamo beans. I find the flavored coffees worse than the insipid brown dishwater served as coffee in most establishments.
At home I have a Jura-Capresso coffee maker. It grinds the beans, tamps the grounds, then pumps hot water through them one cup at a time and will produce a cup ranging from one to eight ounces. On demand, it also steams and froths the milk for cappuccino. Speaking of demand, the coffee maker demands proper care and when it is turned on it will not make coffee until it has been rinsed out. Every 200 cups it shuts down until I run a complete cleaning cycle that flushes everything out including the cup the used grounds are dumped into. Sometimes it is like having a stern Germanic "barista" in the house, but it does make a good cup of coffee and each cup is guaranteed fresh.
If we knew what it was we were doing, it wouldn't be called research, would it?
