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An Ode to Joe

The Source

I had never realized how truly bad a cup of coffee could be until I stopped at a convenience store on the south edge of Peoria. I can abide coffee that’s brewed much earlier in the day, but I’d prefer it be on the same day that I buy the coffee. This stuff was strong, it was acrid, and I enjoyed it very much. I think that labels me an addict. I went all through high school without touching the stuff, then I landed at Illinois College, discovered Tops Big Boy, and I was hooked for life. I wouldn’t call myself a connoisseur of anything, but I know what kind of coffee I like and I’ve never drunk a cup of java that’s been too strong. In fact, the most horrible stuff I’ve ever tasted are those brews over which they’ve lightly passed the coffee can and you can easily read the daily news through the liquid. That’s colored water, not coffee. To a genuine java addict, a bad cup of coffee is like a delinquent grandchild. He may not be great, but darn it, he’s still yours. Don’t flavor it, keep that nasty creamer at bay, and forget the sweetener. I didn’t order a lollipop, I want coffee. Most addicts go through phases, working themselves toward harder and harder drugs. Espresso is the ultimate brew but since the demise of the Three-Legged Dog I’ve had to travel out of town and there’s no way I’m going to hold my craving until I get to Springfield. (Yes, other espresso machines have cropped up in town, but I’m still search for them.) Of course they make home espresso machines, but the Arenzville water eats up any sort of coffee maker in just less than a year and I can’t afford to be shelling out that sort of money. Instead, I went to the coffee pods and now the popular K-cups in which you can get just about any sort of brew imaginable. I must a part of a growing breed, for when I went to County Market in search of the strongest K-cup in the land, I actually had to wait at the end of the aisle for the crowd to clear. More expensive than the canned stuff, but significantly cheaper than the Starbuck-ish market, they’re a perfect match for a coffee addict living on teacher’s retirement. It was a Starbuck’s manager, in fact, who gave me one bit of welcome news. He said that in general, the strong the coffee, the less caffeine you’ll find therein. He told me that the coffee bean only has so much “umph” and the power either has to go into the caffeine or the strength of taste. I haven’t checked his theory out in the textbooks and don’t intend to. All I care about is the taste. I think that the surest sign of your addiction is when you wake up at three in the morning and you wish it were time to arise and make your first cup of coffee. That’s happened to me and of course I’ve resisted, but the event does often send me back to sleep with visions of coffee beans dancing in my head. I won’t tout my favorite brands, except to say that even the worst brands are better than no coffee at all. Lincoln Land Community College’s Jacksonville facility has a coffee machine dispensing Maxwell House coffee. For years the joke was that when Folgers would throw out a bad batch of beans, they dumped them into the awaiting trucks of Maxwell House. For whatever reason, Maxwell House seems to have corned the market in the coin operated coffee business and the stuff up on the Jacksonville Square is truly horrid….and I really like it. If that’s not an addiction…. I’m trying to remember the most I’ve ever paid for a cup of coffee, and I think it was atop the Mt. Roberts Tramway in Juneau, Alaska. The morning was chilly, I’d ridden the gondola to the top to get a view of the harbor, it was the view of a lifetime and I thought I’d top it all off by sitting on the veranda of the mountaintop café and sipping a cup of coffee…an eight-dollar cup of coffee. This was not a super-charged espresso from a fancy Seattle coffee shop or a fancy-pants latte on New York’s Fifth Avenue. This was just plain old coffee. I swallowed my pride along with my coffee and sipped happily away as the cruise ships pulled into the harbor. Note that I have made no mention of de-caf. This is a column about coffee. De-caf is like kissing your sister. You go through the motions but it’s no big deal. The best cup of coffee I’ve ever tasted? Hands down, it’s the stuff I make with two teaspoons of instant dissolved (mostly) into warm tap water in a distant hotel room without access to any other morning beverage. I stir it with the butt end of my razor. All of which leads me to believe that the most precious ingredient in coffee is not caffeine, aroma or taste…it’s simple desperation.