How can I teach myself to like coffee?!
How can I teach myself to like coffee?
I need caffeine to wake up in the morning for my new job. I usually drink Mountain Dew or Vault, but it feels weird drinking it so early. Most people I know say they didn't used to like coffee, but they made themselves get used to it. I hate the taste of coffee, and cappucino and flavored coffee. I can't even eat coffee flavored ice cream. Does anyone have any suggestions or personal experience to share on how to acquire the taste?
Answers:
I don't think you can teach yourself to like coffee. This is from personal experience.
My grandma and grandpa were Swedes from the "old country," and they drank a lot of coffee. When I would go visit them, my grandpa would dip sugar cubes in his coffee and give them to me as treats. I loved the sugar cubes, but when it came to taking a taste of his coffee, that was another matter! I liked the smell but the taste was just too bitter.
My grandma tried giving me milk with a little coffee in it, but it just never "took" with me. The bitterness of the coffee was just too much.
Fast forward forty years: I have a teen-age daughter (14) who has just in the past year gotten to dote on Starbuck's and other fancy coffee drinks. "Mom," she tells me, "You've got to try this! It's so good," as she offers me a taste of her latest frapucchino-mocha-carmel-latte... cream dusted-in-cocoa-powder $6 "coffee" drink. I taste it, and there it is: that yucky burnt bitterness. "It's too bitter!" I protest to my daughter. She shakes her head in disbelief.
I suspect that some people just have taste buds that are so sensitive to bitter tastes that coffee is just not appealing to them, and that I am one of those people. Maybe you are too. FWIW I've been drinking diet Coke for breakfast for the last thirty years. In a pinch, I can drink hot tea, but don't ask me to drink coffee-- it's too bitter.