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PaperclipPerfector  27d ago (text post)   2624 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for April 5, 2024

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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You guys like coffee? I love coffee. I'm not so into it that I have a grinder or anything, but it's almost every day that I drink some at work. I drink it black.

The problem is that I might love it too much. I get a little paranoid that I'm consuming too much caffeine. And maybe I'd sleep better if I didn't overdo it. You guys got any favorite decaf brands? So far, I've tried a total of one decaf coffee, Beaumont from Aldi. It was noticeably less good than regular coffee, and I needed to put quite a bit more grounds in it to match my usual taste, but overall, not bad. I hope some of you can report that you've tried one that's better than "not bad", but who knows.

Nope. Controversial opinion here, I think coffee is a flavor not a real beverage. I absolutely love coffee-flavored desserts, ice cream, mocha, stuff like that. The only time I'll drink actual coffee is if it's in a super-sweet latte or something, with more milk and sugar than actual coffee. Essentially a warm coffee-flavored milkshake.

Or, if I'm trying to be responsible and not drink a meal's worth of calories in a cup, I'll just drink water.

I just don't get proper coffee just brewed in water with nothing or very little else. I don't think it tastes good, it's like stirring spoonfuls of cinnamon or nutmeg into your water. They taste good when combined with the right stuff, but not by themselves.

Coffee by itself has a bitter, unpleasant flavor and I’m convinced people who like it do so primarily because of the positive association with energy, alertness, productivity etc. that caffeine obviously has. It’s no different to an alcoholic who eventually develops a taste for a really disgusting kind of hard liquor because they associate it with being drunk.

A flat white with (relatively little) sugar is tasty, sure, I drink coffee all the time. But ‘milk and sugar’ have a much better record for being naturally tasty to people than hot, bitter, heavily diluted, nutrition-less bean stock.

The Huffington Post apparently did a video where adults try coffee for the first time and hate all but the stuff that tastes least of coffee (the mocha).

I excessively love bitter rich flavors. Like 85% cacao chocolate or dark black coffee. I wish great tasting very dark coffee existed so I could have it all day.

I like black coffee because it is so great. Huffington Post videos be damned.

It's an acquired taste. I personally wish it didn't have psychotropic effects because it would allow me to have more than one cup without feeling like crap. I've tried decaf and that actually tastes bad, so full-strength it is, though I rarely have more than one cup a day.

Try some lightly roasted ethiopian beans sometime, I find they have a much more sour, almost berry-like flavor.

No! Liquor is the wrong comparison! The right comparison is the huge amount of craft beer stouts that get made. I have tried many of these with many different subtleties. Almost all of them are bitter. But some of them are tastier than others. One of them may have some little banana taste in it. Or one tastes like chocolate. Or maybe it's just some uniquely nice bitter taste. Well, okay, I guess liquor is an okay comparison. They're both "acquired tastes". After you drink enough liquor you learn to put aside the taste of the alcohol and actually tasting the rest of it. Maybe something similar happens with coffee. I know someone who is very particular about the coffee he uses, even though he uses cream and sugar he needs his fancy stuff otherwise it doesn't taste good enough. I've tried the same coffee he likes, except black, and I have to admit, it's pretty nice. How dare you say these things about me and my fellow coffee drinkers!! You've ruined this thread!

MathWizard is right, coffee flavored stuff is good too. I'm a big fan of coffee ice cream. I probably wouldn't drink very much alcohol if I didn't like the coffee flavor that stouts have.

I quite like those absurd 12% stouts (in very small quantities), to me they’re quite sweet and have a kind of dessert malt flavor.

Have you had Lion Stout? It's from Sri Lanka if I'm remembering correctly. One of the best stouts I ever tasted. Like 10% alcohol too.

I haven’t, I’ve had Lion Lager though (it’s the most common beer in the Maldives, probably because of proximity), but not the stout.

I'm pretty sure that neither Sri Lanka or the Maldives have or had lions (well, maybe the former has some zoos), but I guess the branding works lol.

Not as bad as Singapore, which was named that way because a myopic Indian prince thought he spotted a lion, which definitely wasn't, at best it could have been a tiger unusually fond of swimming.

Supposedly IPA's have ruined the taste buds of brewers, and there is no way back. I can enjoy a good IPA. Stone Brewing always did good work. But it seems like every fucking microbrew just piled into making shitty IPAs the last 10 years. I can scarcely drink anything domestic anymore because of it.

Still enjoy a solid British pub ale when I'm not having Irish whiskey.

The reason why microbreweries pile on the IPAs is because they're the easiest to make. The bitterness hides so much that there's a large margin of error. That being said, I have some friends who drink nothing but IPAs, so I understand why these places keep making them. I can tolerate them, but it's nice to have a beer I can drink more than two of.

I have no issue with IPAs but I really dislike the ‘classic British pub ale’. I think it’s telling that even in England it seems to be ever less popular - young British men seem to prefer lagers, IPAs or guinness. The 4% British ‘real ales’ are some of the only beers I find truly irredeemable. I don’t know what people see in them.

Well, I'm drinking whatever is good enough to be palatable in America I assume. Innis & Gunn, Boddingtons, Old Speckled Hen, even Trooper goofy as it is to have a British Ale from Iron Maiden.

Old Speckled Hen is quite nice, but to me a lot of them taste almost salty? It’s hard to describe, they have an unpleasant savory taste to me.

I've tried enough IPAs to say that they're not too bad, but I'd definitely rather have a stout. Too many hops. Seems I haven't found any real satisfying middle ground between the super heavy beers (stouts) and the crisp light beers (ales, pilsners, shandies).

You like red wine? I haven't found a red wine I liked. I hate the taste of them, somehow. I like sake, I like white wines, I liked some homebrewed date (the fruit!) wine, but I highly dislike red wines, sweet or sour.

I think an Amber is what you're looking for. Either that or a heavier lager. I heard one bartender at a brewery years ago describe Yuengling as a "balanced" beer, so maybe you want to go in that direction? I know Yuengling doesn't have the cachet it used to have since it's available in more states and the craft beer scene is much better than it was in the early '00s when Yuengling had its heyday, but it's still a decent beer you can always go back to. It used to be all I drank, and I'm about to go to the bar and I think I might get one for old time's sake. I should disclose that I drink beer almost every day and that my daily driver is Miller High Life, so I'm not a beer snob by any stretch of the imagination.

Seems I haven't found any real satisfying middle ground between the super heavy beers (stouts) and the crisp light beers (ales, pilsners, shandies).

How about a nice dunkel lager? It's got the roasted flavors and maltiness of a stout but the crispness and clean aftertaste of a light lager.

I'll give it a shot next time I buy anything. I have too much alcohol in the house because I drink way too slow.

All those trips to Oktoberfest over the years still haven't really delineated the differences between all the different types of beer for me. I must not drink enough.

Have you tried Rioja? I've met several people who dislike most other reds they've tried but enjoy some Riojas. They're different from the French or Italian grapes that are usually grown in California but you can get it pretty cheaply. The Campo Viejo brand is pretty consistent and good for the mid-low price range.

I have not, and I've never heard of it but because it's a red wine I regard it with suspicion. Does it have a lot of tannins in it like other reds? That's probably what's doing it, I am told.

They tend to have softer tannins than most other reds. The Garnacha/Grenache grape in particular is on the lower end of tannins so that would be the place to start.

Honestly I'm not much of a wine person. I find nearly every wine I've ever had inoffensive. I guess I just don't get what makes wine good or not.

You know, my dad growing up used think butter was flavor. Period. Even into adulthood, if something wasn't slathered in butter, he thought it was flavorless.

These days, everyone seems to suffer from what my dad had, god rest his congested heart, except with sugar instead. That's all I can think of when I see people complaining about the taste of coffee sans sugar and cream.

Someone here once said that even modern berries have, say, 50 times the amount of sugar that actual wild ones did. I have no idea if that’s true, but it does Really Make You Think.

My mother ran into a problem where her family recipe for cranberry jelly stopped working. After a few years of debugging, and experimenting with things like altitude, it turned out to be the sugar content of the cranberries. Apparently the modern commercial breed has a lot more sugar than the old breeds. I don't know about 50 times, but it was definitely enough to cause pre-20th-century recipes to stop working.

Watermelon rinds have shrunk, too, causing problems for watermelon rind pickle.

And brussel sprouts are no longer as bitter as they used to be.

I can totally believe modern berries have more sugar. But I have wild blackberries on my property, and at most store bought blueberries are 5x sweeter. I don't know how quantity of sugar versus taste of sugar scales though. Maybe it's logarithmic for all I know. Or my taste buds are broken.

I suppose the thesis is that even the wild blackberries on your property are descended from cultivated species, but again I have no idea if that’s true.

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