COFFEE

I've always wondered, whn an american says they put cream in their coffee, do they mean actual cream ( as in whipping or pouring cream) or do they mean milk?

Never figured this one out.:sad:

Usually they mean cream. Gross, huh? Most Americans who claim they love coffee really mean they love diary and sugar....

No it's not whipping cream. It's actually half and half which is half milk and half cream. It's really closer to milk than cream.

ETA: I once waited tables at a restaurant at breakfast and had a group of people from Belgium. Every time I asked if they wanted cream for their coffee they looked at me so funny and said "No, milk" and I couldn't figure it out! I mentioned it to a guy I worked with who is from India and he said that people in every country but America view whipping cream as "cream". I said "Well that explains a lot!"

I've always wondered, whn an american says they put cream in their coffee, do they mean actual cream ( as in whipping or pouring cream) or do they mean milk?

Never figured this one out.:sad:

Usually they mean cream. Gross, huh? Most Americans who claim they love coffee really mean they love diary and sugar....

No it's not whipping cream. It's actually half and half which is half milk and half cream. It's really closer to milk than cream.

My bad. I was thinking of heavy cream vs whipping cream, which i believe are the same thing. You're right, for coffee, cream normally means "half & half", which is half milk, half cream.

Retired coffee shop employee/manager of 10 years here.

The bottom line is that as you are using less sugar and cream, you're going to be tasting the real flavor of the coffee beans more. So if the beans are low-end, it's going to be a pretty bitter, acidic, almost ashy taste. If you really love your coffee, indulge in a higher quality bean. It's kind of like wine -- you can make some okay spritzers with box wines, sure, but if you're going to drink it straight, it's better to get a slightly higher end bottle.

For not very much money (<$20?), you can get a french press, which is the best way to brew coffee in that it retains most of the flavor that is responsible for the way coffee smells. French presses do not have the heating mechanism that a regular coffee brewer will have, so if you can get a smallish one, that's good.

My advice is skip the "flavored" coffees and buy a higher quality coffee bean. Here's what I would look for:
- 100% arabica beans (this is really important)
- certain flavor "notes" described on the package -- if you take it really sweet and creamy you will probably like stuff that is smooth, low acidity, rich, or with cocoa notes. Doesn't have to be all of those, and "low acidity" and/or "smooth" might be the most important.
- a brand that carries various "regional" coffees (like, just from Costa Rica) and "blends" (from several regions) rather than just "regular" and "french roast"
- I would shy away from super dark roasts like french or italian, but a moderate dark roast or a medium roast are pretty friendly
- speaking of Costa Rica, they grow great beans there -- if you want to try a great regional coffee try a Costa Rican coffee. Latin America in general makes great coffee, but IMO Costa Rica Tarrazu is really special. I also really like Indonesian coffees. African coffees are incredible but can have some more challenging flavor aspects if you're just getting into this stuff.
- if you want to try a blend try whatever they are calling "house blend" or "original blend" or whatever. It will be the least weird tasting.

I really like Allegro's Vail Blend. Allegro is the brand of coffee Whole Foods carries and they are generally pretty spot on, I've never had a bad coffee from them. If you have a local roaster in town try their coffee, too. Happy dance if it's good (sometimes its not). Batdorf and Brosnan (from the PacNW) makes good coffee. Jittery Joe's (from GA) makes good coffee. You can order this stuff online, probably in kinda small amounts to try it out.

Starbucks I believe is using lower grade robusta beans these days? Am I wrong? Tastes like burnt dirt to me. You want 100% arabica beans, anyway.

I don't think you will find a *flavored* coffee that you will like black. These are really designed to be ingested like ice cream, with all the added calories. If you don't sweeten and cream them up, they taste generally bad. I know some people can drink these coffees black but I'm not sure how or why. From a bean standpoint, these are the coffee beans that basically have an un-sellable flavor as plain coffee beans, so they are being sold with "flavor" which is constructed in a lab and then sprayed on the otherwise yucky beans.

Personally I could never get the sugar right in my coffee. I liked a lot but it was always either too sweet or not sweet enough. Finally I started drinking with just whole milk and I found that to taste a lot better somehow. Weird, I know. I feel like the sugar was somehow "clashing" with the coffee and so unless the sweetness totally overwhelmed it, it tasted slightly wrong somehow.

Splenda is pretty okay tasting in coffee. I found it easy to get used to, after a week it tasted "normal" to me. I'm not by any means vouching for it's healthiness, but its low cal. You can get some nice splenda-sweetened Torani syrups. My favorite is Almond Roca but I also like Vanilla and Hazelnut. Mint is surprisingly good. Fruit syrups like raspberry I think taste terrible but some people love them.

I stopped sweetening my coffee some years ago and just drank it with milk until recently, and that tastes pretty great to me. I would brew it really strong but add a LOT of milk, so maybe it's a little more like a latte.

Dairy was a harder one for me to kick, but I don't think there's that much harm in taking even like 1/2 cup whole milk in your coffee. Work your way down to it from cream, if you like. Just measure it out and count it in your diary.

Okay. Enough out of me! Hope you find a nice solution.

Starbucks I believe is using lower grade robusta beans these days? Am I wrong? Tastes like burnt dirt to me. You want 100% arabica beans, anyway.

I hate to defend Starbucks because they pale in comparison to small shop with skilled baristas and roasters, but come on, they're not using robusta. Hell, even Maxwell House is arabica these days.

That's a good idea - I'm going to try that! :drinker:

I used to drink it black, but since my gastric sleeve, I can't. It bothers my stomach now for some reason. I don't have to have it sweetned, but I do at least need some cream or creamer. I tried the soy and almond milk, watered it down too much. I'm tracking it as part of my daily caloric intake. Don't know what else to do. :ohwell:

IV dripline coffee person here. I drink mine only black..about 1 1/2 pots a day and it's folgers half caf :drinker: