I was talking recently to a young man who had never had coffee, and he asked me what it tastes like.
I pondered a moment and told him it tastes like suffering.
But this led me to wonder… how *would* you describe the taste of coffee to someone who’s never had it?
I’m thinking “a mixture of grapefruit juice, leather, and dirt”.
Anyone else wanna take a whack at it, please do so in the comments.
UPDATE: Tangentially related, Sheldon Comics is tackling the topic of coffee right now:
just like it smells.
kiss me, you’ll know.
“Coffee: it tastes like kissing Burt #RejectedSlogans”
Skunk, but really, really tasty.
Nowadays especially coffee tastes like what you put in it so you can’t taste the coffee. It does mimic Obama’s taste in women though, bitter and black and when heated gets colder.
It tastes like that black beverage they sell at Starbucks, but much better
I am not adding a comment unless this is a contest and I can get cookies.
No?
Well, I will share my brilliance with you anyway: My coffee tastes like the delightfully roasted dandruff from the exquisite scalp of the goddess Aphrodite.
It tastes exactly like what you’d expect from taking a poisonous bean, roasting it, grinding it up, and pouring water through it.
imagine a creamy bar of chocolate that has been lovingly strained through a lead-acid battery using an motor oil soaked rag that was previously used to stop up the exhaust pipe of a state garbage truck.
It’s a bit worse than that.
Pour the leftover hot soapy water from after bathing 57 homeless people into a dirty coffee mug and enjoy. For Starbucks, just wash 78.
Boiling water with Joe Namath’s dirty jock strap.
That’s where “Cup of Joe” came from.
Wow, guys.
I sure am glad I’ve never tried it. 🙂
Why in the world would you drink the wretched stuff?
Can anyone explain it to me? I’ll award cookies if you can…
Anonymiss, I’m not 100% sure since I don’t drink the stuff either, but I think it has something to do with eeeevil caffeine. That’s why they invented Coca-Cola–for those of us who haven’t burned off out tastebuds!
*our
One reason to drink it is the ol’ “Kill Two Birds With One Stone” efficiency thing — why drink only water to rehydrate, when you could drink water plus stimulant? Cold juices and sodas in the morning take body heat from your stomach to achieve parity with your body temp. Warm beverages are better, but cocoa is too sweet and tea is too like hot water. Thus, coffee, by process of elimination. Lattes and cappuchinos are too expensive and dainty.
Also, you can punctuate your sentences by tossing the last few drops into the campfire, like cowboys do. Can’t do that properly with any other beverage.
…it tastes like ambition.
“What does it taste like? Kid, ever take a sip of tea while you’re smoking a cigar?”
“Ever melt a brown crayon and taste it?”
Be a coffee achiever!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x9BEb0Wmb_I
Cookies to Mike in OH, Oppo and Da**Cat for your explanations.
But I still don’t get it 🙂
Anybody else wanna try?
I just do Zumba and drink water. 😛
Wellll, I tried. {Tosses coffee into campfire} {Campfire: Tss-s-s-s-s!}
Cookies to Harvey for explaining that people drink coffee because they bought into the propaganda the National Coffee Association aired in the 80s. 😛
Zumba is better. 🙂
@20 – Anonymiss – Thank you…
Anonymiss: Coffee is a good accompaniment to cookies. The bitterness of the coffee intensifies the flavour of good cookies (or so the N.C.A. tells me).
it’s like bourbon…no one likes the flavor, you’re going for effect.
Miss Anony, I can only tell you what it does for me, personally. It lights-up my brain with the taste of Irish Whiskey! Now, you combine that with a good pipe (or cigar) and some walnut/chocolate chip cookies after lunch (or dinner), and you’ve got yourself a triple winner. (BTW, I sleep like a baby every night having come from a long line of sleeping dreamers (aka low blood pressure). My grandfather used to eat a bar of chocolate with a cup of coffee at 10:00 p.m. and then go to bed and snore.)
Coffee – it tastes like the labor of a thousand peasants.
Seriously, it depends on the origin and roast of the beans, but in general it tastes a lot like a drink made from baker’s chocolate (unsweetened bitter chocolate), with a lot of the same flavors you’d find in wines, especially red wines.
Ok, I WAS going to say the thought of Anonymiss doing Zumba wakes me up way better than coffee, but I would probably be banned from this board for life.
oooppsie!! Did I type that out loud?
@26 Greg – So you’re ready to give up coffee and take up Zumba? It’s fun! 🙂
Cookies to Greg, blarg, Jimmy, Burt and silaS marreD for trying to help me understand the allure of coffee.
Alas, I still do not.
I don’t smoke or drink either, so those comparisons don’t help me.
I like my cookies straight up 🙂
Anybody else wanna try and explain coffee? I do *get* dark chocolate. It’s good in some cookies…
@ Mike in OH
actually Coca-Cola used to be made with coca leaves and contained cocaine. It was marketed as an energy drink.
Why would you ask what such a readily available beverage tastes like? It’s like scouring the internet to find out if it’s hot or cold outside. Does your house have a door? Try stepping outside.
In other words, just taste it. It tastes like that.
I can’t speak for anyone else, but I drink coffee because I am incapable of learning from (literally) bitter experience. Coffee smells like heaven, and no matter how often I am proved wrong, I simply cannot bring myself to accept that something that smells that wonderful could taste that awful. Also, exams in college had me drinking coffee with two tea bags added to the mug – it was a caffeine delivery system, nothing more. Addicts will stab themselves with needles to get what they need, so drinking a cup of strained burnt plant parts doesn’t seem so bad, really.
@31 COB – “Coffee: just be glad it’s not intravenous #RejectedSlogans”
@30 Chuck – No thanks. It’s way more fun to bug you guys. 🙂
Cookies to Chuck and CrabbyOldBat!
Depends – first thing in the morning it takes like magic, a little before lunch it starts tasting like mud.
If you accidentally let your coffee sit too long and collect a film on top, it tastes like cat puke.
Coffee tastes like the reason you are drinking it.
Coffee is proof of two things. Nothing could taste as good as the promise of coffees aroma. It promises ambrosia, bliss, and joy. What it actually tastes like is so disappointing compared to the promise, so bitter, so ugly, you know that A) There is a god, and B) He has a nasty sense of humor.
@ #29 blarg—I know! That’s what makes it awesome! And better than coffee!
@ #18 Anonymiss—Thanks for the cookies! Now I have something to be thankful for this Thanksgiving! 🙂
Oh, Anonymiss, I’m a regular ol’ Toll House kinda guy. With milk, lots of milk.
Well, it depends… Let’s start with “Domestic”…
Black: Tastes kinda like burnt tea – ish, or burnt toast that’s been exposed to chocolate fumes but no actual chocolate.
Cream & Sugar: Ice cream that’s gone ever so slightly off… but we’re talking LOTS of cream and sugar. And by “cream” I mean the real stuff, not that explosive powder you often see.
Foreign:
Arabic (black): Not the same thing as “Arabica” but often MADE with “Arabica” just to be confusing. The hint of petrol is “natural” in the sense that it is definitely not “supernatural”.
Spanish (black, brown, light): Usually just a euphemism for illicit sex (or so I’m told), “real” Spanish coffee – at least the one time I had it forced on me – had WAY too much citrus and cloves mixed in. That may sound terrible, and frankly it really was, but there’s a toned-down version I actually recommend (more about that later).
New York City (Manhattan) corner food cart: Road tar and kerosene mixed with (but not filtered through) charcoal. And not that wimpy “ready light” charcoal either… we’re talking the bulk, home-made stuff which was SUPPOSED to just be from all hardwoods but it’s obvious someone “accidentally” threw in some white pine, thus the fleeting hint of turpentine. Most people would also mention it often has “more than a hint of mustard”, but I maintain that’s non-standard and only results from slovenly carelessness in the “daily” cleanup effort. This is why it’s best to purchase “coffee” from a street cart manned by a young guy who hates his job but still loves life, as opposed to all the others manned by jerks who simply hate life. Unless for some reason you really love mustard.
Brazilian: I’m not the only Conservative around here who’s been to Rio, and I have to admit that when I did so… I became a “coffee snob”. It tastes like dark, liquid, wonderfulness. DamnCat was right in saying it tastes like ambition… or even better, it tastes like driving ambition realized all the way through to success! Pretty heady stuff too, if you consume it in the quantities I used to.
Denny’s: Technically not a foreign land like Rio or NYC, so the coffee’s decent but not legendary. But since SO MANY DISCOVERIES result from happy accidents, I would be remiss if I didn’t mention that in the spirit of extremely-toned-down Spanish coffee, Denny’s coffee is extremely good with a lemon slice or two squeezed into it. Sounds gross, right? But it isn’t. Here’s why:
The bitter taste of most coffee is from it being alkaline. Adding acidic lemon juice to it cancels out the bitterness and leaves behind a drink that is actually quite a bit better than burnt tea.
I’m sure that waitress has forgotten us by now.
When I had a 12 hour shift to get through I’d brew a pot of coffee when I came on watch.
By 5:30 in the morning there’d still be about a half a cup of mud in the pot, having steamed on the heating pad all night long, and another 1/2 hour to go before my relief showed up.
I’d pour that toxic sludge into my mug, add 2 packets of sugar, 1 package of creamer, a teaspoon of instant coffee and enough hot water to fill the mug.
Some men climb mountains, some men hunt lions – I’d drink that whole mug of coffee and like it!
I have nothing left to prove to anyone!
That’s what coffee tastes like to me. 😉
If you get a chance to smell a freshly opened can of coffee, it tastes close to that smell but not quite. For me, coffee means getting pearly to drink “coffee ” with my daddy before he left for work. Coffee tastes like love.