Switching to Black Coffee at Home

My affair with coffee started at a fairly young age. I was probably about ten or twelve at the time and my mom asked me if I wanted to try a cup. It was difficult for me to get past the inherent bitterness of coffee, so we mixed it half-and-half with hot chocolate powder. The net result was almost like a mocha, but not really.

Eventually, sometime in my teenage years, I did away with the hot chocolate mix and started having a proper cup of coffee. Like so many other people, I preferred my cup as a double-double (two cream, two sugar) and I stayed with this kind of formulation until partway through my university career. After a while, I just felt the coffee was too sweet, too diluted. And that’s when I switched to one cream and one sugar.

And that’s largely where I’ve stayed with my regular brewed coffee for years. I want to be able to taste the coffee, but I don’t want the bitterness to overwhelm me either. This is partly why I prefer McD’s over Tim’s. The latter just doesn’t taste like coffee to me. I don’t mind a slight “burnt” taste, so long as I can actually taste something aside from the hot water.

But this morning, I made another switch. Looking through the fridge, I had no milk and no cream. So, I brewed up a pot of coffee and just had it black. No cream, no sugar. This certainly isn’t the first time I’ve done this, but it got me thinking: do I even need the cream and sugar in there anymore?

The inherent bitterness of black coffee doesn’t bother me anymore. And if I eschew the cream and sugar, coffee is virtually zero calories. It can help to reduce my snacking, as well as keep me alert (albeit in spurts) throughout the working day. I’ll likely still get the occasional “signature” drink from Starbucks and other coffee shops, but when I’m at home, I’m going to give this black coffee thing a swing for the foreseeable future.

How do you take your coffee? Or are you more of a tea person?