Being true to your ideals really sucks sometimes. It’s been four days short of a month – yes, I looked it up – since I discovered a can of Plan B coffee was four years out of date and decided it must be used even if I must choke it down.
At the time the pantry was down to its last can of decent coffee, and I chose to take a hit for the team. Because I’m a putz. The team is me. LB doesn’t even drink coffee. So who is being served by this?
It has done some good for the pantry supply, since it currently sports 3 cans of the good stuff instead of the 2 that would otherwise be up there…
…and I guess that’s a good thing. Since I’m really reaching for good things.
To up the torture factor of this exercise in philosophical purity, I even saved the last handful of beans in the old can of the good stuff…
…so I’d have something decent to serve my only occasional houseguest. Landlady sometimes comes over for coffee on her last day in the gulch, and I was hardly going to ask her to suffer through six-year-old house-brand floor sweepings if I had better. Particularly since she supplies the better.
Funny thing is that I expected to just get used to it by now. Coffee is coffee, after all, and you usually like whatever you get used to. But it has been four days short of a month – yes, still counting – and my first thought upon my first sip of what’s probably the only cup I’ll have today was “Gah, this shit is horrible.” At last I understand: No wonder people burden their caffeine infusions with cream and sugar.
Yeah, of course I tried sweetening it. That at least cuts the toxic aftertaste, but I still don’t like sweetened bad coffee any more than I like sweetened good coffee.
The good news is I stocked a lot of tea in late autumn. The bad news is that’s only stretching the supply of bad coffee. I don’t think I’m going to make it to the end of this exercise.
A wise man knows when to simple give up.
Is there room in your life for compromise? (Stretch the good stuff with stale house brand beans)
it is a false economy. throw it away.
now only buy what is good and drink less of it.
Bourbon makes a wonderful sweetener for coffee, especially bad coffee and there is no such thing as bad bourbon. Cheap bourbon yes, bad bourbon never.
Who knew that a smelly, penniless old cedar rat could be such an effete coffee snob?
Go ahead and throw that crap out, Joel. You’ve done your bit for philosophical purity, frugalism, or whatever you’re trying to prove. Coffee is to ENJOY.
Oh Joel, I know exactly what you are talking about. I started several years ago with whole bean coffee. I progressed to a real burr grinder, special filters, the works. A few years after starting with the whole bean, I came across TWO cans of ground coffee in the back of some stuff in the store room. Seriously out of date. I opened one and tried it. BLEAH! Horrible. And remembered it was horrible when “fresh,” which is why I went to whole bean. Dumped the can I’d opened, and gave the other one to the local food bank. If they think it is no good, then they can throw it away. I hate to waste stuff, but that was a waste when it was put into the cans.
“Coffee is coffee, after all” No Joel, it’s not. Saying that all coffee is the same is like saying all whisky is just whisky. One of the very few things I splurge on is coffee. I don’t do canned coffee I get my coffee from a place that roasts it right there so it’s as fresh as can be. I buy it as beans and when I make coffee it’s ground in a burr grinder and lastly I don’t do the milk or cream or sugar stuff. Like whisky, I enjoy the taste of coffee.
As for not throwing the old stuff out consider this… Who does Don Quixote hurt more when charging at the dragons (windmills), himself or the windmills?
Toss the old coffee.
I’m so glad I’m a coffee slob. All coffee isn’t the same, but they’re all caffeinated and that’s really all I’m after anymore. DH will only drink Folgers classic roast so that’s what we go with. I used to do some nice whole bean coffees, but DH didn’t like them and it just wasn’t worth the trouble or expense to have 2 coffee makers to accommodate the situation. Just rolling right along, no philosophical purity involved.
I drink coffee a couple steps below Folgers. However, if the coffee is six years old, it might be rancid. Used to work at a coffee shop years ago and still clearly remember grinding out of date coffee for a customer and making the whole shop reek.