First time drinking coffee

All my life, if I ever had to drink anything it was always cold. I never liked warm or hot drinks of any kind, so it is no wonder that I ended up staying away from coffee, until now.

I guess hanging around a bunch of habitual coffee drinkers would eventually lead me down a path to actually try it for once… or twice… or more. Every day, when we’re at work, I see them drinking coffee and for years I never gave it a second thought.

Of course, just like with most things I do, on a whim I decided to try some just to see what all the fuss is about. And, of course, just like with most things I do, I had to try things to the extreme and go for the choice not recommended for novices.

If I was going to experience coffee, I needed to know what actual coffee tasted like, so none of this stuff where they add things to the coffee, I just wanted black coffee.

A day before, I asked a guy I work with what kind of coffee he would recommend a first timer and he told me a Cappuccino would be a good start. Then, I asked him what he usually gets, which was a Long Black.

Now, by this point, despite the fact that I’m a novice, I know the difference between a Cappuccino and a Long Black, which is why I ordered a Long Black then next day when I went out for lunch with the two guys I work with… they were even more hyped about the whole experience than I was.

I was warned that the Long Black would be too much for me, but I went for it anyway… and you know what, I didn’t gag, it was bitter as all hell, but I didn’t mind it at all. I am well aware that it is an acquired taste and that, being new to coffee, I wasn’t tasting the nuanced flavour of it all, but for a first time experience, it wasn’t a bad one.

The one thing that worried me was the fact that it was hot as hell. Like I said, I prefer cold drinks, which is why I’ve spent most of my life drinking Coca-Cola as a substitute for water. The Long Black I ordered was surprisingly hot which may be a thing to note if I order a take-away coffee in the future, because it stayed hot for a very long time.

And yes, I did enjoy it, despite it not tasting like anything but very bitter… bitterness… I don’t know how to describe it.

What I can describe is the effect it had on me which was apparent. I was told, after I got up from my chair in the coffee shop to go back to work after the lunch break that my eyes were a lot more open and yeah, I was feeling the caffeine taking effect.

What I didn’t realise until I got all the way back to work and started teaching my next class how much of an effect it was actually having on me. Right then and there, I decided to look up just how much caffeine is in coffee compared to Coca-Cola… and, well… hmmm, it is a hell of a lot more than I thought there’d be.

The truth of the matter is that I was so wired for the rest of the day that when I got back home, I started working on my Metroidvania game and, well… my alarm went off… the alarm that was meant to wake me up in the morning. All I could think was “Oh, I should awake right now… but I didn’t go to sleep!”

Whoops.

Yeah, I stayed up the entire night without realising it and ended up going through the entire next day wondering how I was going to go because I had a lot of things to do and it was a pretty full day for me. Thankfully, I got through it and got back home and went straight to sleep by 5:30 PM.

I woke up at 6:30 AM right on the alarm when I was supposed to and realised that I had just slept for 13 hours. Okay, I had SEVERAL questions about one of the guys I work with and his coffee drinking habits if this is my reaction to a single Long Black. Apparently, despite drinking Coke like a fish, I had never felt a caffeine rush like this in my entire life.

Monday was the day of the Long Black, Tuesday was the longest day and waking up on Wednesday, I thought, “Let’s give this another try… with the opposite end of the scale.”

After looking at my options, I decided to go for a Mocha with the intent of finding out what coffee tastes like when you mix a few things in there. I know, Mocha is considered more of a dessert coffee and not a thing you have on the regular, but at this point in time, I’m trying different things just to see how it all turns out.

The Mocha was certainly a different experience, with the added hot chocolate, I was more able to distinguish the coffee flavour as well as the separate chocolate flavour. It was nice, but since I’m on more of a health trend these days, it will probably be a rarity for me to order one of these.

I want to try to get the benefits of coffee without indulging in the added things people tend to put in it that negate the good stuff.

I’m thinking, next week, I’ll try a Cappuccino and a Latte and in the proceeding weeks, try a Long Black again. I’m sure, after a while, the caffeine hit won’t be as extreme as it was the first time and I’ll actually start to gain more experience with the drink to taste the flavour of the coffee instead of it just being a mouthful of hot bitterness.

I’ll let you know how it all turns out.