Well, do you actually like the taste of coffee? If not, I'd reccomend some other form of caffeine delivery.

Me too.

Don't get a Senseo machine. They are rubbish.

(This probably also applies to all the other proprietary coffee pod systems)

I will give on epiece of advice (more for society's benefit than anything else). Don't start your journey into the land of beanjuice by ordering a half-caf raspberry skinny soy latte extra froth doubleshot whackadoo potion. Have a cup of Taster's Choice or something first. All that frou-frou has warped a generation.

Disclaimer : I am a coffee snob.

The best method evar of brewing coffee is the Aerobie Aeropress.

Second to that is the Swissgold One Cup Filter.


The Aeropress makes the smoothest coffee I've ever tasted. I love kitchen gadgets, and this has to be the best gadget I've ever bought. It's wonderful. The little filter is reusable - just peel it off the end before you eject the 'puck' into the trash. I generally re-use a filter four or five times.

Coffee made in a standard drip filter electric coffeemaker is ok if it's drunk quickly, otherwise it soon gets bitter on the hotplate.

The pod system of brewing coffee is evil. I've been in several stores where they've been demonstrating various models and every single one I've tried has been disgusting.

*subliminal message - buy an Aeropress*

eschew those fancy ultra-caffeinated starbucks monstrosities. get a mr.coffee and some filters and either the store-brand ground or a step up from that. cream, milk, sugar, to taste. it's easy, right? or you could do like my parents, and boil a pitcher of instant all day on the stove.

The Aeropress seems to need you to boil water for it on the stove first which seems like a fatal flaw to me. I'm not capable of operating a stove until I've already had a cup of coffee in the morning. I use a Zojirushi drip machine that drains into a thermos and doesn't have a hotplate so the coffee doesn't get burnt sitting there.

I'll second the recomendation to start out simple and go with a classic Mr Coffee type machine and some basic coffee. It's easy to make and you'll know pretty quickly if you like coffee or not. For some added comfort, spend a few extra bucks and get one with a timer so the coffee is ready when you are in the morning.

Our house brand is the Chock Full of Nuts New York roast, which we have to mailorder by the case, but it's the one we like the most and it actually ends up cheaper than buying a similar coffee in the stores.

As long as the beans are well-roasted (and fresh); and the grounds are properly ground for the method (and fresh), everything else a matter of preference: the method of brewing, the darkness of the roast, whether you take it black or sweet.

I like toddy cold process for every day because it's convenient and lower acid. For toddy, I brew whatever smells good at the Tea & Coffee exchange that week. I like to use a chemex on the weekends. For that, I brew Intelligentsia.

Do we have a new hadjiboy?

Invest a little bit of money in good coffee beans, such as you would find at Oren's.
(or whatever your local equivalent would be.)

Store those beans whole in the freezer. When you need to make your coffee, grind as much as you will need for that batch, and no more, using a burr grinder. These will be more expensive than the $10 blade grinders you'd find on the shelves but blade grinders suck like the proverbial Swedish vacuum cleaner. Avoid them.

Beyond that, you won't need much in the way of fancy expensive. With good beans and a good grinder, you can make some mighty good coffee, even with otherwise cheap equipment.

Worth looking into is the humble Moka Pot, which can produce some decent espresso -- I know that the purists will sneer at anything that doesn't produce 1.73 mm of perfect crema foam on each and every cup but who cares what they think -- at a very reasonable price. The best places to find this would be at an Italian or Spanish market.

I am also a coffee snob. I don't drink great coffee every day, though; it would be a waste a lot of the time, when it's a utilitarian early-morning slug to get me going. So my house brand is the steady Eight-o-Clock Bean.

The thing is, though, you can't just say "I want to drink coffee" and ask 100 people what the best way to do that is. You're going to get 100 answers. Coffee is like wine or beer; you're going to like some of it, hate some of it, tolerate some of it, and think of it in different categories at different times.

So first, decide whether you like the basic flavor of coffee: bitter, acidic, roasted beans. Mmm! Try some basic blends at home or at unfancy places, black, as jonmc suggests.

Then decide whether you like to adulterate it (I do use milk or cream to take the edge off acid flavors - can't stand sweetener of any kind). If you only like coffee with a lot of milk and sweetener, you don't really like coffee. That's fine, but in that case, you're best going to your neighborhood coffee joint and drinking the kind of coffee milkshake beverage that has become so popular in recent years - or to Dunkin' Donuts, where the regular has about 4 tablespoons of coffee and an equal amount of half-and-half. If this describes your order, and if the coffee flavor and/or temperature aren't doing much for you in themselves, then you might just as well have cocoa or Coke for your morning beverage. Same caffeine, same sugar, and lots of people do this.

But let's say you enjoy the flavor of coffee. If you like the basic taste and don't need to sweeten/flavor it much to enjoy it, then you might want to branch out and try some espresso and espresso drinks like latte, cappucino, cafe au lait, etc. Despite what some'll say, there's nothing especially snooty about these drinks in themselves - they have been peasant breakfast drinks in Europe for centuries. Many Americans consider espresso drinks too strongly coffee-flavored. You might love them, or you might think they're too strong, or too expensive, or too much of a pain because you've got to go to the coffee place to get them. You can, of course, get a home espresso maker - but we wouldn't be talking about that until you knew significantly more about coffee and its preparation and knew that you really, really liked it and would drink it for years to come before you made that investment.

Stay away from k-cups and all pods. That stuff is swill, love in a canoe, nasty.

There's no way to develop your tastes for coffee without drinking a lot of it, though. Just get started trying it a few different ways and see what you gravitate toward.

jason's planet: it's not really recommended to store beans in the freezer (though you often did hear that not too many years ago). It's only worthwhile if you use beans slowly or won't want them for weeks, and if have time to let them warm to room temperature before brewing.

The cold of the freezer renders the volatile oils less responsive to the hot water and you get a weaker brew. The oils are what give coffee their flavor and aroma, so you don't want to freeze them into a turgid slush before brewing. Always start with room-temperature beans - their oils will be more readily soluble.

Irving Farm makes a really good house blend. Straightforward enough for someone just starting out with coffee, but flavorful enough to satisfy the snobbiest snob in snobville. (They have a cafe near my job).

I'd reccomend just getting a cup of generic swill at the corner deli to find out whether you like coffee at all before investing a lot of money, though.

If you're not already caffeine-addicted, I'd consider not doing it. You'll regret it someday if you do. It's a bona fide and very serious addiction. Massive migraines and depression when you try to quit.

I mean, do you want to be dependent on a drug every morning just to be able to function? Eventually that's how it is. The pleasant buzz goes away and from then on it's just a maintenance dose that has no real noticeable effect other than that the jonesing goes away and you're capable of acting alive.

I'm a hardcore caffeine addict, having been a barista and managed coffeeshops for many years. I wish I would've stayed off it except for the enjoyable tea or coffee buzz that comes with occasional use and moderation.

Sorry.
;-(

Hey everybody. Thanks for the comments. I have recently gotten off some medication that had a nice side effect of making me very alert during the day. Now that I'm off, I get sleepy right after lunch and kind of drag the rest of the day. I noticed if I drink Coke, which I despise, I would perk back up again. So thats why I am looking for a new stimulant. Also, I always wondered what Quinten Tarentino meant in Pulp Fiction when he referred to certain kinds of coffee as "the expensive shit". Keep the ideas comin'.

If you only like coffee with a lot of milk and sweetener, you don't really like coffee.

DO NOT AGREE!!! (a caffeinated opinion)

If you're not already caffeine-addicted, I'd consider not doing it.

I two-thirds agree with this. Some people seem to do fine, some don't. Using and not using caffeine both seem to have some advantages. But I always seem to drift back to my usual 1-2 cups a day.

I wouldn't call myself a coffee snob, but I gots my hard won opinions.

The Basics:

hardware - a basic kettle, a Melitta #6 10 cup coffee maker, a large French press, a glass lined (not stainless steel!) thermal carafe, an inexpensive blade grinder, mugs (suit yourself as to size and shape, but large mugs keep coffee warm longer - I recommend 20 oz. tall mugs). Maybe, a candy thermometer (for checking water temperature).

Consumables: Melitta #6 cone filters, whole bean coffee. Possibly, bottled water, if the tap water in your area is of poor taste.

If you live near any commercial roasters, you should visit them, and sample their blends, to see what you like. Otherwise, buy vacuum sealed whole bean coffee in your grocery store, such as Eight O'Clock Brand 100% Columbian, which is a decent all occasion coffee for most drip based drinks. Or, if you live near a donut shop like Dunkin' Donuts or Krispy Kreme, get a pound of their whole bean roast coffee, to make at home, as they do a big business in coffee, and their house blends are very consistent in roast, and always fresh. A lot of people buy their coffee off the 'Net, but you can get eaten up in shipping costs, so be aware!

Start with light roasts and avoid flavored coffees, so as to learn to brew flavorful coffee in the usual ways. But do experiment with trying lots of different coffees and darker roasts, as finding out what you like is a big part of the fun of drinking coffee. The simple equipment I've recommended is very easy to clean, and gives you tremendous control of the brewing process, so you can generally find a way to make a good cup of coffee out of many different styles of roasted coffee.

A manual kettle lets you control the water temperature of your brewing very exactly, from 190°F on the low side (for bright, acidic Arabica blends) to just short of boiling [212°F] (for dark roasted Columbian blends and estate varietals). You learn quickly to correlate the sounds of your kettle as it nears boiling to exact water temperature, and water temperature does make a big difference in the oilness and acidity of coffee you brew. You'll generally hear a "roiling" noise from a kettle as the first bubbles of steam develop, when the water is still at about 180°F, but that's too weak to properly brew coffee, and if you try, you'll get a weak, bitter result. If you were to stir the water at that point, the initial "roiling" sound would go away, because the water is only hot enough to begin to form steam within a millimeter or two of the kettle bottom. As the water heats more, it gets to a temperature where no amount of stirring you could do would stop the creation and rapid rise of steam bubbles, and at this point, the water is well over 205°F. By the time a kettle starts "singing" at a full boil, the water can be slightly above boiling temperature (due to developed steam head), which is too hot for brewing most drip style coffee. You generally want brew water to go in to coffee grounds between 190°F and 208°F, with darker roasts taking a slightly higher brew temperature. But while you're learning the sounds your kettle makes, before it comes to full boil and whistles, you might want to check the water temperature with a candy thermometer. Be careful not to get a steam burn while learning, as it is easy to "flash" a hot kettle by removing the lid, or lifting the whistle!

The blade grinder I've recommended won't produce the finely controlled grind size a top of the line burr grinder can make, but the blade grinder is fast, and can produce a whole range of grind coarseness, without mechanical adjustment, simply by "pulsing" the grinder for a few seconds at a time. And you can instantly and directly see the results of your grind, which is pretty useful as you are learning to grind. I have about $500 worth of Italian burr grinders (which I mostly use on the rare occasions I still fire up my Gaggia machine), but I use my $20 blade grinder 95% of the time. You hear occasionally that blade grinders somehow "burn" coffee, but that is provably bullsh*t, as the temperature of coffee that comes out after grinding will be within a degree or so off what it went in - there is simply nothing in a blade grinder that heats or oxidizes coffee in any way a burr grinder wouldn't.

You can brew either in the Melitta cone drip maker, for standard drip brewed coffee, or in your French press, for darker, oiler blends. If you make more than a cup of coffee at a time, transfer your brewed coffee to your carafe to keep it hot, and avoid having to reheat it. Clean your coffee equipment with each use. If you wash manually, I still recommend using a few drops of automatic dishwashing gel, and a dish brush, in preference to normal dishwashing soaps, as the automatic gel has surfactants and rinse agents that clean off coffee oils easier, and let your glass carafe dry without spotting.

With the above hardware, you can make a very large variety of coffee drinks, tailoring water temperature, quantity and strength easily, to suit the coffees you use, circumstances and your taste. You can make enough coffee to share with friends, or just a cup or two for yourself.

To make espresso based drinks (espresso, cappacinno, etc.) you'll generally need a pump based machine, and a good burr grinder (espresso machines rely on a properly ground and tamped "puck" to brew properly), as the simple stove top espresso makers generally don't develop the pressure needed for good extraction. But, if you like the oily, burnt taste of Starbucks espresso, the stove top units and some very dark roasted Arabica might be just the ticket. Espresso coffees are generally roasted longer than coffee beans intended for drip use, and as a result of the additional roasting time, espresso has less caffeine per unit volume than American style coffee, although espresso can taste "darker" due to the additional roasting and pressure extraction process, which pulls more oil from the coffee beans. If you like espresso drinks, and can afford good burr grinders, good espresso machines, good espresso beans, and the time to learn to become your own barista, great. It's a fun hobby, and your coffee loving friends will love you. But it's generally something you step into after some study.

On preview: "... Always start with room-temperature beans - their oils will be more readily soluble."
posted by Miko 25 November | 18:47

I couldn't disagree more, the relative physics of hot water, which has a lot of thermal mass, against the small thermal mass of the most deep frozen beans, being, relatively, what they are. Frozen beans grind fast and smooth, are less prone to clumping in a grinder, and the resultant grounds are brought to brew temperature by boiling water within milliseconds of the water hitting them.

Coffee? Don't bother. I'm going on more than 15 YEARS of trying to acquire a taste for it by trying it at least once a year. I've enlisted coffee snobs and they have all failed. There is only one coffee delivery device that has pleased me: coffee ice cream.

The last time I tired coffee was taking a quick swig to kill morning breath in deference to Mrs. Plinth. I'll let you figure out the rest: it was worth it.

Coffee is bilge water. It is nasty, bitter and foul.
You'd be better off with caffeine soap if you want a morning jolt.

paulsc, just google "freezing coffee."

So here's an off-the-wall data point:

I work in a language school and spend most afternoons/evenings during the week on my feet constantly, with only a few breaks. I had to stop drinking anything with caffeine to stay awake after 2 or 3 in the afternoon - right at the beginning of my shifts - because I wasn't going to sleep until much too late. My solution to cure the "it's break time and I want something to consume pretty fast that will do me some good"? Water and a healthy snack, like an apple from the corner store, or something a little more substantial brought from home, like half a sandwich and some soup.

I know, I know - these things are not coffee. But coffee here is Nescafe - or the local variety of Nescafe [shudder] - and there aren't many good alternatives. I noticed that I'm basically just as alert as if I'd had a few cups of coffee after eating a healthy little meal, and it's enough to power me through to the end of the day. My adult students have organized themselves to bring in herbal teas and little snacks and candies for our evening two-hours-plus classes; I bring in one of the school's electric kettles and some plates/cups, and we all stay active until it's time to go home.

The moral of this anecdote all the way from scenic Latvia is this: try and find out if your energy is flagging because of something other than going off this stimulant; perhaps eating more, smaller meals through the day and keeping your water intake high will be enough.

In my own experience, room-temp beans taste better than freezer beans. For experience calibration purposes, I use a blade grinder set to medium, water from the Britta carbon filter heated in a kettle, and I brew in a Melitta Cone. I consume a pound of beans in roughly two weeks.

My favorite bean by far is the "Nueva Segovia" from Pachamama Co-op.

Another tip: Avoid the bulk coffee sold in the large plexiglass hoppers at the market. The turnover in the hopper isn't that fast. Worse, the volatile oils from the beans coat the plastic surfaces, and then slowly oxidize and go rancid, which lends a the rancid flavor back to the beans. Yuk. Buy vacuum packed coffee in metal or mylar.

My grandmother is responsible for my coffee addiction. She used to make me cafe au lait as a kid. It was mostly milk with a touch of coffee and lots of sugar. It tasted like melted coffee ice cream and was yum. I have since worked my way up to chugging dark roast black.

There's no shame in starting with the frou-frou sugary stuff if you want. I only learned to like good coffee by drinking lots of bad coffee. The same is true of good beer, good wine and good cheese.

So I agree with the advice to start simple. Mr. Coffee. Maxwell House. Get some of the flavored creamers if that's what floats your boat. Sugar it up. Once you learn to like "coffee" in general, your palate will start asking for upgrades.

I learned not to freeze from my sister-in-law, who spent five years at Allegro Coffee as a coffee buyer and educator. I knew that freezing the oils was considered a problem, but as it turns out I didn't have a full understanding of why. It's not that the oils won't return to a liquid state - my mistake. It's a host of other factors - freezing causes oils to break down; freezing puts beans in a dehydrating environment, particularly if not completely sealed; freezing exposes beans to freezer odors; when you pull frozen beans from the freezer, condensation forms on them, and the oxygen carried in the water destroys flavors, etc., etc., etc. Whatever the reason, and even though the difference may not be all that noticeable, in the professional world of coffee today, freezing beans is not recommended. Airtight room-temp sealing is recommended instead. The only time freezing gets a seal of approval is when the coffee will not be used for a long time and it's frozen in single-use portions.

Wandering Goat Organic Coffee: Freezing coffee, even if done properly, will have an effect upon the structure of the coffee oils, which contain the key to coffee's flavor, the aroma. However, coffee oils will become rancid over time and freezing can slow the process of spoilage, right? Using some common sense can help you decide whether to freeze your beans or not.

It is important to remember that coffee beans are very porous. Most freezers get a lot of use which means that the temperature inside the freezer is fluctuating and creating moisture which will end up on your beans and turn into ice. When you remove your coffee from the freezer, the ice will turn to freezer-flavored water. This water will find it's way into your porous coffee beans and, alas, into your cup. When you put the coffee back into the freezer, the cycle begins again.

CoffeeOutpost.com: Freezing Coffee - Not as Good as an Iced Mocha

Some people store their coffee in the freezer thinking it is going to keep the coffee fresh. Here are a couple of reasons why storing coffee in your freezer is a bad idea:

* Coffee is porous. This is a good thing for fans of flavored coffee as the beans absorb the coffee flavoring syrups and oils that are used to make flavored coffee. However, if given the chance, coffee can also absorb other things like the flavor of seafood or the moisture that your freezer produces. This moisture will in turn deteriorate the coffee and even make it taste like, well... like a freezer.

* When coffee is roasted, the beans release their oils and essences to give the coffee its distinct flavor. You'll notice these oils are more prominent on dark-roasted coffee and espresso. When you break down these oils by freezing, you are removing the flavor.

Think about it.... if coffee tasted better and fresher from the freezer, then you would buy it in the frozen food section, your local coffee shop might look more like an ice cream parlor, and our power bills would be through roof trying to maintain a meat-locker the size of a warehouse.

Vittoria Coffee: We do not recommend the refrigerator or freezer for storage of coffee as it may dry out the coffee. Coffee is hydroscopic and will absorb moisture and flavours very easily. If coffee is placed in a freezer the viscosity of the oils are affected altering the flavour.

Now, on another note entirely, jrossi's advice is excellent,so I rescind my earlier statement that you can't make yourself like coffee by drinking sugared/flavored versions. In honest retrospect, that's exactly what I did: as I considered her comment, visions of tins of Suisse Mocha began floating before my eyes. Yes, it's true. Roads can lead from the Pumpkin Spice Latte to the single-origin, shade-grown, hand-sorted Gautemalan peabean. Enjoy!

"paulsc, just google 'freezing coffee.'"
posted by Miko 25 November

I have, previously. Here's a representative sample of the dire hoo-hah that comes back:

"... Avoid refrigerating coffee, as cold coffee beans immediately attract humidity from the environment when taken out of the refrigerator. Freezing coffee is even worse. Natural oils in the bean denature as moisture in the bean freeze. This changes the flavor of your coffee dramatically."

And then, on preview, we have your further appeals to authority.

I live in Florida, about a mile from the ocean, and the relative humidity here is usually about 90% and the temperature is sub-tropical. In the 30 seconds it takes me to measure out and grind the 2.5 to 3 oz of coffee beans I use to make a pot, before brewing water hits the ground result, how much humidity from the environment are the frozen beans going to attract? Answer: Not enough to even see as a film on the beans, before they're turned to powder.

As for the claim of coffee oils being somehow "denatured" by storage in a freezer, I'd really like to know what is so special about coffee vegetable oils that they are somehow "denatured" by low temperatures, when other vegetable oils, including those of flours, grains, and vegetable fats like Crisco are unaffected. My frozen wheat flours, buckwheat flour, cornmeal, and similar products taste the same as they do before freezing, even if kept frozen for months. Frozen meats don't go rancid, either. If there is any "denaturing" of coffee oils being done somewhere in the brewing process, it's much more likely to be as a result of raising the oils to brew temperature, than of storing the beans in the freezer.

But a guy named Ken Fox who loves his espresso got into this scientifically a while back, setting up a double blinded taste test comparing freshly roasted espresso beans to those roasted and stored in a home chest freezer at -26°F for four to eight weeks. His result?

"I'm going to limit the technical and statistical minutia presented here since the results were "negative," which is to say that there were no statistically valid differences shown. Jim Schulman and I are planning to write another article dealing with experimental design and the scientific method as they apply to research into coffee and espresso. We will use this study and some of its more detailed results as examples in that paper. If you are interested in seeing the raw data obtained in this study, it can be found in both table and graphical form in the section at the end of this article.

When the results were examined according to the three scored parameters, the overall preference, the crema, and the intensity of the taste and aroma, no statistically significant differences were noted among the coffees studied or the other variables of the study. What this means is that none of the tasters could consistently differentiate among the shots made with previously frozen or never frozen coffee. Similarly, none of the tasters could consistently tell the difference based upon whether the shots came out of the newer rotary pump driven or the older vibratory pump driven espresso machine, nor between the two grinders, one of which had brand new burrs and the other with more heavily used burrs. ..."

But anybody is entitled to their opinion, I guess. It's just that coffee is one of those topics that collects a ton of differing opinions, on a vanishingly small body of repeatably testable fact.

Yeah, I read that too, which is why I mentioned that a lot of people think it doesn't make a noticeable difference. But whatever, do whatever you want with your beans.

As for appeals to authority, I believe in authority and think it's just about the best thing to appeal to. Always have, since well before freshman logic class. People who actually have knowledge and experience are certainly invaluable resources, aren't they? If we didn't have 'em, we'd just have to believe whatever anybody said.

As to other oils in the freezer: they degrade, as well; coffee may generate greater interest since it's usually used as a single ingredient, not mixed in a recipe as oils and grains are. But chefs organize their kitchens with the understanding that every whole-food ingredient degrades in quality the longer it is stored. Butter quickly takes on freezer flavors. Grains are subject to the same problems that may affect coffee. Freezer storage guidelines are available all over the place, and generally emphasize the need for an airtight seal and for not thawing and refreezing. It's possible to do that with coffee, too, but people often leave a loosely sealed paper or plastic bag of coffee in the fridge and make a pot at a time, rather than removing beans from the freezer and then securely re-wrapping the coffee while excluding excess air. So they gain nothing by using freezer space for coffee. If you can't notice a flavor difference anyway, why not keep it on the counter where it's more convenient?

On preview: "... Always start with room-temperature beans - their oils will be more readily soluble."
posted by Miko 25 November | 18:47
I couldn't disagree more, the relative physics of hot water, which has a lot of thermal mass, against the small thermal mass of the most deep frozen beans, being, relatively, what they are. Frozen beans grind fast and smooth, are less prone to clumping in a grinder, and the resultant grounds are brought to brew temperature by boiling water within milliseconds of the water hitting them.

Excellent science, no doubt absolutely correct. But you obviously don't understand coffee, which owes far more to the black arts than any amount of science. If it tastes better to the person describing their methods, then it is better.

"... If you can't notice a flavor difference anyway, why not keep it on the counter where it's more convenient?"
posted by Miko 25 November

'Cause it stays fresh 4x or more times longer in the freezer, than it does on the counter? So, I can splurge on a pound of certified Jamaican Blue Mountain, or genuine Kona, and enjoy it, a few cups at a time, over a couple of months? 'Cause it grinds faster and smoother, and because dark roasts and other oily coffees don't pack up the grinder nearly as badly?

The comparison made in the study I cited was between fresh roasted coffee and coffee frozen for 4 to 8 weeks. My experience is that coffee sitting on the counter for 2 weeks isn't as good as fresh roasted, so if I'm going to buy expensive small lot coffees, and generally have several varieties on hand, I'm looking for a proven way to keep them as fresh as the day they were roasted, for at least 4 to 8 weeks, otherwise I'd feel obligated to drink the primo stuff morning, noon and night, lest it die waiting. Storing coffee in the freezer is a good way to keep it at "fresh roasted" quality, for at least 4 to 8 weeks, and doing so lets me enjoy a far more varied menu of coffee throughout each week, just as freezer technology extends vegetable, meat, and grain products goodness for me. I lurves me some mechanical refrigeration!

Along the lines of understanding that dg mentions, I guess I don't really get your concern for "freezer flavors," as my freezers don't seem to have funny smells and tastes that cross contaminate food. They're frost free models, and I hit their interiors 2 or 3 times a month with a sponge soaked in a little sanitizing solution, and put a preventative box of baking soda in the corner of 'em every other month, just in case. Only takes about 5 minutes a month, tops. I also pack food for freezing in freezer bags, or vacuum seal containers, so there's not a whole lot of opportunity for direct air contact with any food I store. I'd be pretty grossed out if foods I stored frozen had the kinds of cross contaminations and quality issues when I wanted to use them, that you speak of with such concern, and if I found they did, I wouldn't use 'em. But it doesn't really seem to be a problem, here, and I doubt that freezers so stinky they'll ruin coffee faster than having it sit on the counter, is a big issue for most people.

I am a reformed coffee-addict, who now only drinks tea, but, for an early morning jolt of strong, home-made caffeine goodness, I never found anything to match a Lavazza Qualità Rossa espresso made in a Gaggia Classic machine.

Get a cheap brewer (Mr. Coffee, Bunn, whatever)and make sure you put good coffee in it. Anything you can find thats in a fancy looking bag with Eurowriting on it will do. Brew yourself a pot first thing in the morning and you will be in heaven.

KEVIN'S COFFEE MACHINE FUN FACT™: To prevent the coffee from scalding on the burner, put a couple pennies on it so that when you rest the pot it actually sits up on the pennies rather than directly on the burner. Works like a charm and extends the life of the coffee.

No need to go crazy with fancy makers and such. Once caffeine has it's hooks in ya, you'll be buying that stuff soon enough. Start simple. For an added bonus, add a cigarette to the morning ritual. You'll wonder how you lived without this potent little combo.

Now that I'm off, I get sleepy right after lunch and kind of drag the rest of the day. I noticed if I drink Coke, which I despise, I would perk back up again. So thats why I am looking for a new stimulant.

You want YERBA MATE!

Seriously. Caffeine is a credit card--Get energy now, PAY later, lol. Mate doesn't leave you with a crash. Get some agave cactus nectar with which to sweeten it and you're flyin'.

Serious athletes (like Triathlete Brendan Brasier) love mate for many reasons, not the least of which is that it is alkaline, and an alkaline body is a healthy body. Cancer can't even thrive in an alkaline bod--it requires an acidic system in which to survive.

If you want an afternoon pick-me-up, you might consider certain foods, too. A bowl of miso soup is an amazing thing. Good for hangovers in the morning, too.

Miso soup as an afternoon pick-me-up? I've never heard of that. I'll have to try that. Especially now that winter is hitting.

Mixed Chocolate Covered Espresso Beans. 5 lb. Bag.

For an added bonus, add a cigarette to the morning ritual. You'll wonder how you lived without this potent little combo.
*licks lips, breathes deeply, pines for the old days*

Man, I miss that first smoke of the day :-(

danostuportstar posted above what I was going to. I also recommend the Indonesian lollies Kopiko for a delicious boost. Otherwise, I love coffee - preferably black, no sugar, strong and espresso but I'll drink it any way. I find the little stovetop moka pot the best/least hassle for two small cups in the morning, but think you should experiment until you find what you like best and what works for you.

This looks like a good sampler for coffee lollies.