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# How I became a coffee drinker
I have never considered myself a coffee drinker for most of my life. At the time of writing this, I am in my mid-thirties and started drinking coffee about a year ago. If it wasn't for my depression getting worse over time, in conjunction with a new employment due to my previous employer closing for good, I could have easily continued to live my life without ever drinking coffee again.
My first cup of coffee, and probably the last one, as far as I remember, is now more than twenty years ago. It was probably diluted 50/50 with milk and thus somewhat palatable, but I didn't really like it anyhow. Since I didn't feel obliged to becoming a coffee drinker (or a smoker, drinker, television addict, for that matter), I didn't pursue it any further and simply never did it again.
Well, until lately, that is. Sometime a few months into Corona it just so happened that I lost my day job, but luckily found a new employment immediately. I am working as a TV repairman, and my new employer is a service contractor for a professional German coffee machine company, among other things. That is how we happen to have a really nice coffee machine at our disposal all day, that also does Espresso and Hot Chocolate. And of course I am a sucker for hot chocolate :). And despite not liking coffee at all, I do like coffee flavoured chocolate and Tiramisu.
One day I got myself a cuppa and some drops of coffee contaminated my chocolate. Or so I thought. But I actually liked how it tasted. So I started experimenting by adding a small Espesso to my hot chocolate, which really enhanced the flavour to my liking.
Around that time, my dysthymia really struck me with a double depression (but I didn't know it back then), and I was extremely tired all day long. So I thought, why not try and start drinking coffee right now, since caffeine is said to help against tiredness anyhow, and I have everything right there in front of me. Adding a new recipe to the machine was easy, to let me try different mixtures of coffee and chocolate without getting in the way of the drinking habits of my fellow colleagues.
Unfortunately the caffeine didn't help with my tiredness. Much to the contrary, there were times when I thought that it would rather make me dizzy in the evenings. Which turned out to not being the case, though. I had plenty of dizzy evenings, even when not drinking any coffee for several weeks.
Experimenting with different mixtures was fun (and tasty, of course), but I never really liked the taste of a plain, black cup of coffee (or Espresso). On the other hand, I started to object against drinking one, or sometimes more, cups of sugared beverage almost every day while at work.
That's how I got myself a French Press, a proper coffee grinder, and several different roasts of coffee beans for some extended experimentation at home. Since I usually only pour myself a cup or two every week, if at all, the experiments are ongoing and surely won't be done anytime soon.
Timemore Chestnut G1 Manual Burr Grinder
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preamp's gemlog on 2022-06-25,
a sunny and warm saturday afternoon