My Grandma introduced me to coffee when I was young and I still drink it black. I was probably nine years old when I had my first taste, then at twelve a small cup, and later a full mug. While I observed that many of my family members added sugar and cream, I thought there was something cool and authentic about her drinking it black. So, I followed in kind.
Recently at Brazen Careerist, in the coffee group, a coffee aficiando asked the question:
So, how did everyone get started drinking coffee?
Fellow members were quick to answer, and many were introduced by someone in their family. I wasn’t the only one. Curious, I gave my Grandma a call to find out how her affair with coffee began.
My Grandma still drinks Folgers and Maxwell House, but my family recently bought her a Kerig K-Cup, so she’s beginning to explore… Regardless of her coffee brand preferences, Grandma told me that she was likewise introduced to coffee when she was young. Her Grandma use to put a few drops of coffee into her milk, and it was the fragrance that drew her in. It wasn’t until she was older that she moved from coffee with sugar and cream to coffee black; she didn’t enjoy the taste of powdered milk offered at restaurants.
Like me, my Grandma’s affair with coffee was and continues to be social. It wasn’t just about the coffee.
So, now it’s your turn. How did your affair with coffee begin?
20 Comments
Growing up I had access to coffee when Dad would take me fishing or hunting. He had one of those green vacuum bottles and the coffee inside was black. I didn’t particularly care for the taste, but treasured the feeling of being invited into the adult world with my dad by sharing his coffee with him.
Forward to 1978, I was 19 years old and working as a roughneck on an offshore drilling rig. We worked 12 hour days and nights on a two week “tour”. This was off the coast of Louisiana so the coffee urns were kept full 24 hours a day with Community Coffee Chicory Blend from Baton Rouge. To my surprise, I loved the taste of this coffee much more than the swill poor old Dad drank, and the quarts of it I drank each night kept me on my toes in a hectic, dangerous environment.
I married in 1979, and my wife was a good old Yankee girl that had grown up drinking coffee daily. I would bring home bags of Community Coffee on my trips back home to the mountains of East Tennessee after each two week tour of duty in the Gulf of Mexico.
After I left the Oil Rig we continued to mail order Community Coffee for many years until we moved to Atlanta and Starbucks came along. I no longer care for Starbucks dark, bitter coffee and have been a home roaster for over six years now. It’s all I can do to keep enough coffee roasted for my wife and I and our two college attending children. I roast just over 10 pounds of coffee a month now, in addition to what I order from artisan roasters from all over the country.
@Mark Thank you for sharing; my father had one of those green vacuum bottles as well! It seems that most coffee drinkers remember how it started. Where do you buy your green beans and what type of roaster do you use? I use a Gene Cafe and get most of my beans from Sweet Maria’s, and also a few local roasters here in Seattle.
Jason,
I made my own roaster. I can roast a pound of greens at a time. I use a propane turkey fryer as the heat source. I generally get my greens from “The Green Coffee Coop” and “The Green Coffee Buyers Club”, I have purchased from Sweet Marias a few times but I can get quality greens from these two coops so much cheaper.
@Mark I can only roast a 1/2 pound at a time; sounds like an interesting contraption you’ve made. I’ll check out your green bean sources before I order next time. Thank you.
@CoffeePedaler I picked it up at Central Market. It was pricey, but worth it. Save it for a special occasion.
@Jason Coffee Let me know when you write more about your affair with coffee on your blog.
Being more of a recent coffee convert, I’ve just returned from 2 yrs oversees drinking Nescafe and a Barista @Starbucks showed me the Clover. From then the pace of the story quickens and I now find myself working in a coffee shop, reading about coffee, watching coffee on YouTube, and tweeting non stop about #whatsinyourcup and coffee events around the SEA area.
I remember asking my dad for a cup of coffee as a kid. He let me try his, folgers, one time and I was so excited for the first sip! I did not like it, I must have had a really developed palette.
Fast forward about 15 years to age 21 and my first position as a barista. I had to get to work at 4 am and I was staying up till 1 am.
So I started drinking coffee so I could be alert. I started having fun with it making all sorts of drinks I had never tried before. And so began my coffee journey.
Thanks for sparking my memory on this. I think I will write a more detailed version for my readers.
Jason Coffee
http://coffeecupnews.org
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Thank you everyone for sharing how you’re affair with coffee began!
@Van Yes, I recently had a Kona Coffee Macadamia Coconut Porter; a collaboration beer by Ken Schmidt, Maui Brewing Co., and Stone Brewing Co. It was excellent.
Man, I’ve got to try this! where did you pick it up?
Describing my love of coffee is an affair is appropriate. It’s a secret love affair. It’s dark taste and aroma seduces.
I was raised in Italy, where the best coffee is in abundance. My mother brewed made espressos and cappuccinos daily. There was never a time in my life without the familiar and appealing sight and smell of coffee. Sometimes I was permitted a small portion of cappuccino.
I didn’t start to drink coffee habitually (it was an occasional treat in high school & college) until I entered the work force. To tame insomnia, I rarely drink coffee and rely on tea instead. But I still enjoy hearing coffee brewing, seeing coffee in cups, smelling coffee…
As a child we used to visit family in Peru at least once a year for 6-8 weeks-usually around the Christmas holiday in Lima and in Chiclayo. I was probably 7ish and my aunt always had cafe con leche in the morning with some toast. I used to join her and my uncle would always encourage me to try some even though my mother didn’t really care for it. I think they must have thought that I wouldn’t like it but I would drink it every morning with them. I continued when we returned to the States but it didn’t taste the same. Years later, in college, I visited Spain and it was then that I started a real appreciation for coffee that I tried to replicate when I got back home- it was SO different from the bad diner coffee I had in school. After graduation, I lived in San Francisco and found a coffee culture that was vibrant and have always had coffee around.
Appreciation and heritage have led to my current endeavors of finding and roasting specialty coffee from Peru and other Andean countries in South America.
I do remember my parents having coffee brewing when I was a kid. I remember wondering how in the world someone could drink that stuff black!!!
When I was a Sophomore in high school I got one of my first jobs as a barista at a small used bookstore. It was the beginning of the espresso fervor in Seattle and I was happy to be a part of it! I knew what Americanos, Espresso, etc. was before many others. However, I never really got addicted until later in adulthood.
As an adult, when I was in between jobs, I got a job at Starbucks. It was here that my coffee addiction went full throttle. When I started there I was a tall vanilla latte kind of guy. It was funny how I slowly progressed. First, double tall vanilla latte. Then vanilla americano with cream. Then Americano with cream. Finally drip coffee with cream.
Today I’m a black coffee kind of guy. Ive become the adult that I wondered about as a little kid. What’s next? Brussel Sprouts? When I’m at the coffee shop I’ll get an americano or drip coffee. I rarely, if ever get a latte and I never get a flavoring in it. Blasphemy! Funny.
1991, My friend David Morris asked me to move up from Oregon to work at his espresso cart in Buckley, WA. That used espresso cart in front of the local gas station/convenience store is now called Dillanos Coffee Roasters.
I wasn’t a coffee drinker and didn’t understand what espresso or a latte was so David took me to Starbucks inside the Tacoma Mall and treated me to an iced, double shot, tall vanilla latte. I was hooked.
Oh man, I distinctly remember wanting to drink my grandfather’s beer when I was a little one.. so instead they figured they’d gross me out by letting me drink black coffee.. nope! I loved it and became full addicted. Now I love coffee AND beer!
Had Coffee Beer yet? It’s Cocaine for Coffee/Beer lovers!
I never had a cup of java until the night my hubby proposed over the midnight brunch at El Gaucho. Drank 3 cups!!!
Mine was my grandma’s on the Oregon coast. After smores, hotdogs and fishing for crab, there’d be homemade blackberry pie and fresh black coffee.
I remember exactly how it got into coffee. It started with Mocha Ice Cream. Followed by a meeting at a coffee shop where i asked if i could have an iced mocha. I remember the first time i made it a double shot instead of a single. From there I started working at a coffee shop that made the best mochas i had ever tasted where i kept drinking them but couldn’t support the expensive habit elsewhere so I started venturing into cappuccinos and macchiatos.
Over the past 6 years i have worked myself into a very healthy love for great coffee even to the point of starting my own shop.
Would you believe Army basic training?
Can’t remember the first time I drank it, but it was always a fixture around our house. Many memories of my mother cramming for law school drinking black coffee. When I got to be a teenager, coffeeshops were one of the few places you could hang out, and a bottomless cup thus became a night’s entertainment. Great idea for a post!