ONE MORE CUP OF COFFEE [489]

"freeze-dried"

A good coffee will not need milk or sugar, as far as I am concerned – at least, that is my conclusion from only just starting to drink coffee for the first time in my life.

Watching other people contend with and compromise in drinking coffee kept me safely with soft drinks up to now, my sweet tooth being happily satisfied, mostly by The Coca-Cola Company.

But tastes change with age, as does your body – I felt mine becoming less impressed by fizzy drinks, and so a solution had to be found.

I rarely tried accustoming myself to hot drinks. Soft drinks have uniformity of taste, but they both cost and weigh more to carry home from a shop, because they need to be pre-prepared and ready to drink. Hot drinks take time to prepare and perfect.

That may be obvious, but I avoided hot drinks for this reason. I prefer just to add hot water and be done with it. Instant drinking chocolate, usually by Cadbury, was the hot drink I had the most before now, but even then, only occasionally, getting bored of forcing Dairy Milk into me. Tea has always been the opposite, too weak for my tastes no matter how long I steep the bag, although a peppermint infusion is much preferable for me to standard black or white tea.

Modifying the taste of your tea or coffee by adding milk, sugar or whatever else led me to think that changing the tea or coffee itself would be more appropriate – like I have done with soft drinks up to now, having a satisfying taste that can stand on its own was what I wanted.

So why coffee, and why coffee now? My family started watching “Twin Peaks” just before Christmas 2024, a very welcome, and endlessly fascinating, alternative to what TV schedules had planned in the festive period. In the character of Special Agent Dale Cooper, the show’s creators David Lynch and Mark Frost, with actor Kyle MacLachlan, created a character who, among all his fastidiousness and intuitive methods, had a love of coffee so great it sold the concept to me. A stronger, more full-bodied taste was what I was looking for, and on the one occasion someone at work asked me how I liked it, I said without hesitation, “black as midnight on a moonless night”.

I first decided to sample the coffee at work one day, not having realised tea and coffee, and milk and sugar, were being supplied in the break rooms, having never needed to look before. However, the three types of instant coffee on offer – “smooth”, “decaf” and “rich”, all apparently from Kenco – were terrible to me. The “smooth” and “decaf” granules smelled burnt, and the “rich” coffee I made was too bitter for more than an initial sip.

The coffee I have arrived at was what we had at home, recommended by my sister: Percol smooth Colombian coffee – “roast 3”, apparently. One teaspoon produces a perfectly nice cup of coffee to me, a sense of warmth and taste without the bitterness, and without all the fuss. No Americano, flat white, long black or other type of complication, and no snobbishness or crema spoons – just a Platonic ideal of a cup of coffee.

The only addition I need is an insulated mug to keep it warm.