Confessions of a Java Junkie

Everyone has their drug of choice. Mine is coffee (otherwise known as java, joe, or the bitter brew). It's a nasty, vile substance that gives me the jitters and turns me into a wild, erratic, totally capricious person. The problem is that when I drink it, I literally drown myself in the stuff: one or two cups is never enough; once I start, I have to consume vast oceans of coffee. In my prime - during college and graduate school - I could easily down eight or nine cups of coffee while I was working on a paper or studying for finals. On those days, friends and loved ones would stay far away from me, because they'd know that the dark demon who usually lies buried within me would emerge, ready to snap off the heads of innocent bystanders.

Like any self-respecting junkie, I would never dream of downing an inferior blend of coffee. Forget Starbucks (too bitter and lacking in subtlety) or Dunkin Donuts (a total waste of the beans picked to make it). If you are not lucky enough to be living in Europe, the only way to get the perfect cup of coffee is to make it yourself. You have to start with the right kinds of whole coffee beans - 100% medium-roasted arabica beans, preferably grown in Columbia. Then you have to grind the beans just before you are planning to use them to get the optimal flavor out of them. Timing is everything when grinding coffee beans: grind the beans for too long and your coffee will be muck, not long enough and you will have coffee-flavored water.

Then comes the really hard part: deciding on the best way to prepare the coffee. In my time, I've tried just about every method conceivable to make coffee, including using fancy french presses, my grandmother's old fashioned Italian percolator, and the standard regulation drip coffee maker. But the method that always works the best is the one that my dear friend, John Steffen, showed me when I was a poor graduate student in Belgium. Here it is: Find a plastic filter drip that fits on top of a thermus (Melita sells them for a few bucks), put a conical filter in it, and fill it with two rounded (not heaping!) tablespoons of coffee per cup that you are planning to make. Meanwhile heat up some water, and, when it comes to a boil, slowly pour the appropriate amount of water you need over the ground coffee beans using a measuring cup. When you are finished, seal the thermus, and enjoy hot, delicious coffee all day long. There are much fancier ways to make coffee, but none has ever worked as well for me as this method.

Now that I am in my mid-forties, the liabilities of coffee have vastly begun to outweigh the benefits. There will come a time in the not-to-distant future when I will have to kick the coffee habit out entirely, if only to preserve what it left of my esophagus. I can assure you that I am definitely not looking forward to this day. For now, however, I will continue to enjoy the occasional cup of finely prepared coffee, treasuring the chemical rush I get as the caffeine in the beans slowly courses through my body.

...and everyone around me will just have to resign themselves to the fact that dealing with nasty, evil, manic, caffeine-addicted Mike is the price they have to pay for the pleasure of my company.
Whatever that's worth.