I love coffee, a lot. I love the smell, the taste, the ritual of making it. Once you’re drinking it a lot, it’s also very hard to cut back because if get those massive headaches and you feel like your brain is foggy.
But suddenly I was feeling angry, irritable, had trouble sleeping and was not following along the material from my master’s research that I used to have no problem reading. So I forced myself to quit caffeine. Ooooooh boy. Turns out drinking a lot of coffee really does mess you up. The first couple of days were terrible, but by the fourth day I was waking up singing with the birds as if I was a Disney princess.
Now I still drink coffee, but only when I wake up and only one cup. No more than that.
its me with pop.
I found out I was now lactose intolerant when I kept having breakfast shakes or chocolate milk before work and was dying and having awful shits the first half of my day
The stomachpain is just noncoffee leaving the body.
Non-coffee, weakness… same thing.
Best time to decide to stop using any drug is seconds after using it.
I can quit anytime I want (as long as it’s not in the morning or that lull in the afternoon when I get kinda tired)
I was having the second problem which I told myself was the caffeine dependence but it turns out it was a Vitamin D deficiency!
And the caffeine dependence.
What’s the deal with pour over?
It’s not at all popular here. Everyone has pod machines.
I drank pods and drip for years before ordering a pourover thingy. The first time I tried nice, freshly ground pourover it was like I was drinking coffee for the first time. The taste is sooooo much better! I’ve also done French press, but pourover is easier to clean. I like pourover better than anything else.
I can’t drink coffee anymore—caffeine ruins my body and makes me think I’m dying. But I miss it so!
In my experience, pod machine coffee (specifically Keurig) tastes way worse than auto drip machine coffee, which is worse than the best coffee that you can make via manual pour over.
It’s easy and makes good coffee and you don’t have to fuck about with a machine or pods and all kinds of waste
How does the coffee compare to espresso though?
I’m not a connoisseur so genuinely asking.
I don’t have a pod machine. I grind coffee by hand and use an espresso machine.
My understanding, rightly or wrongly, is that you need the pressure to “crack” the ground coffee and get the good stuff out.
Edit: it’s ok people I get it.
I’d say that it’s almost completely different. With pour over you’re getting a longer drink, very different texture (in general a clean cup, varies a bit depending on pour over style) and with good quality light roasted coffee beans a ton of flavor and tasting notes.
you need the pressure to “crack”
I’ve never heard this (which doesn’t mean much) - my understanding is that pressure is simply another form of extraction.
You don’t need pressure to make good coffee. You do need pressure to make espresso.
Another point in pour over vs espresso is flavor profile. You get totally different notes and zero bitterness from pour over.
The key with pour over is controlling how much water and how long it “brews” to prevent over extraction.
If you have a grinder I’d recommend getting a basic pour over and a gooseneck kettle. Electric ones are fantastic for tea, pour over coffee, moka pot coffee, french press and more.
A well made pour over will be every bit as “good” as a well made espresso. It’s also way less demanding in terms of equipment and technique.
Making an espresso on par with the best coffee shops requires a great deal of skill/experience and thousands of dollars in equipment. If you don’t have the skill or equipment, straight espresso is usually pretty disgusting.
You can make a phenomenal pour over with a YouTube video and $150 in gear.
However, they’re different styles of drinks. A pour over is much less concentrated and doesn’t have the crema/body of espresso.
Not true at all. You just grind it at the right level.
It’s surprisingly easy to make (but with a ton of room for finesse I am learning). You do need a coffee grinder to take advantage of maximum bean freshness, though, but taste difference is huge
Taste difference compared to what though?
Obviously real coffee is better than instant, but pressurised extraction (espresso) always seems a lot more flavourful than say a french press.
Compared to machine drip for sure, but it can pull out a lot of different flavors than you’d get from espresso (whether you want those flavors is another issue). My friend turned me on to the 4:6 method if you’re curious about methodology. I wouldn’t argue that it’s better or worse than espresso or drip (okay maybe drip 😂) but it’s giving me the flavors I want out of coffee right now.
Why not use a french press?
French press is an immersion brewing method, also typically unfiltered. It produces a mellower, more full-bodied brew. Pour-over is a percolation brewing method, typically filtered. It produces stronger, clearer flavors with less body. Both are excellent, cheap alternatives to using an auto drip machine and will absolutely produce better coffee than most pod machines. Which brew method is better depends on personal preferences.
For old man reasons: coffee oils can raise cholesterol in some people and using a paper filter lowers the oil levels
I’m somewhat incredulous. I don’t mean that in a “you’re totally wrong you idiot” kind of way, just that I’m surprised I haven’t heard it before. I’m a cardio patient and drink too much coffee all day long.
They’re correct, but also exaggerating it. If you ask somebody to brew you a cup using a french press, and using the same ground coffee, a batch of a pour over, you’ll notice some oils floating on the french press cup and not the pour over. So indeed, the paper filter will remove lipids from the brew. But are those in a quantity that could “raise cholesterol in some people”? Absolutely not, you’d have to be chugging coffee like a monster and even then, the tablespoon of butter you use in your toast is a much bigger concern.
I am definitely not an expert and probably a poster child for “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing” but after hearing about cafestol and kahweol and reading articles like this, I figured better safe than sorry since I tend toward borderline high.
Excellent OC comic! Also Pour-overs (I call it the Triangle) are clearly superior coffee drinking tech.
Thanks! I like the triangle as a name for it. I went to Japan this summer and it took me forever to figure out they call pour over/the triangle “drip,” (which is what I think of as machine coffee). Gotta standardize these names!
You can mitigate the coffee stomach issues by adding a cup yogurt to your morning. It can’t be the shitty stuff like yoplait, but it does do enough to help with that.
I have fallen off my yogurt intake. A good reason to pick it up again
I hear milk helps.
I use milk but was just gifted a frother so probably using less milk than before. Maybe (hopefully) that is the real culprit
Oat milk is even better IMO. Nutty flavor just builds into the coffee perfectly.
Also very helpful for people who don’t realize they are lactose intolerant.
Coffee will still get you rolling, but in a much kinder way.
Love me some oat milk!
