Tweet
Hallo.
As Ive said before, iced coffee is the way I drink coffee, and I often buy it at places where I eat, such as cafés or restaurants. To me, iced coffee after a meal is what a glass of wine is to many other people when they eat.
Perhaps 50 percent of such places have iced coffee I regard as unacceptable, and maybe 40 percent or so are acceptable but not outstanding; the 10 percent remaining are above average, and a few of those 10 percent truly outstanding. I try as far as possible to organize my coffee-drinking at the few percent or at least the 10 percent.
I have been lucky that the smallish town I live in has a couple of good places (for iced coffee - many more have good food or other drinks): one of these is in the top few percent, and the other in the 10 percent. (Heck, I may as well say what town its in, given that its named in my profile anyway. Its Healesville, Victoria, which is maybe 15 miles or so east of the outer eastern Melbourne metropolitan area.)
However, I have a strange problem with the second-best place (the one in the top 10 percent). I have been getting iced coffee there for a couple of years, and initially I might have even placed it in the top few percent category.
To some extent my rating for any iced coffee may go down slightly after Ive been having it for a while. It hasnt changed at all, but the novelty factor wears off and I take it just a bit more for granted. I think its a fact of human nature, that *anything*, however good, tends to wear off a little with exposure.
But the problem with the second-best local iced coffee is that, in the last couple of months, I have noticed that I have quite strongly gone off it, so that I sometimes dont enjoy it much at all, or may enjoy it to begin with, but somehow not like it much when I get to the end.
Wondering if the way it was made had been changed, I mentioned this to the staff, but they assured me that it was exactly the same as a year or so before. I thought that maybe Id just had it too often (sometimes every day for several days running) and needed a longish break from it.
Yet Im not entirely convinced by this rationalization. I cant help wondering whether the milk has something to do with it. Now I can imagine some purists thinking at this point, "There you have it! The milk is just poisoning what might otherwise be good coffee." Yet its not that simple, at least with me.
I have a slightly strange relationship with milk. I absolutely hate a plain, unflavoured glass of milk. I had to have it often as a boy, and disliked it; but I was required to have it because it was supposedly (perhaps really) good for me. Since then I have never had it, and think it would make me feel sick now. I have no problem with milk in cooking, and I use it in small quantities on breakfast cereal or muesli, with no problems. Maybe oddly, I like cream on breakfast cereals, desserts, in iced coffee, and so on.
Yet (this is the strange bit), although I strongly dislike plain milk, I absolutely need at least a small amount of milk in my iced coffee, and it usually gives me no adverse feeling at all. To the contrary, I would not like iced coffee black at all.
I cant help wondering whether this might be tied up somehow with why I seem to have gone off this iced coffee; yet it doesnt happen with iced coffee at other shops, some of which could well use a similar amount of milk - although I dont know that for a fact - maybe this place *does* use more milk than the other places; but even if so, that wouldnt explain why, for a year or more, I was perfectly happy with the iced coffee and why that has changed only recently.
I asked them if they used a special kind of milk, such as soy milk, skinny milk, or other "special" types, which might have caused the problem (I do not much enjoy iced coffee made with skinny milk); but the milk they used seemed to be perfectly normal, standard milk. There was no reason to question the freshness of it, either.
I also notice that theres a kind of froth on top, probably a mixture of milk and coffee. I dont like this froth much, and also wonder if that could be related to it. Next time I go there, I will ask how they make that froth, and ask them if they can leave it out, and see if that makes a difference.
Anyway, I just thought Id ask about this here. Have any of the knowledgeable people here encountered a thing like this before, and do they have any clues as to why I might suddenly go off a particular iced coffee for no apparent reason?
I would be interested in anyones thoughts on this.
Thanks.
Regards,
Michael.
As Ive said before, iced coffee is the way I drink coffee, and I often buy it at places where I eat, such as cafés or restaurants. To me, iced coffee after a meal is what a glass of wine is to many other people when they eat.
Perhaps 50 percent of such places have iced coffee I regard as unacceptable, and maybe 40 percent or so are acceptable but not outstanding; the 10 percent remaining are above average, and a few of those 10 percent truly outstanding. I try as far as possible to organize my coffee-drinking at the few percent or at least the 10 percent.
I have been lucky that the smallish town I live in has a couple of good places (for iced coffee - many more have good food or other drinks): one of these is in the top few percent, and the other in the 10 percent. (Heck, I may as well say what town its in, given that its named in my profile anyway. Its Healesville, Victoria, which is maybe 15 miles or so east of the outer eastern Melbourne metropolitan area.)
However, I have a strange problem with the second-best place (the one in the top 10 percent). I have been getting iced coffee there for a couple of years, and initially I might have even placed it in the top few percent category.
To some extent my rating for any iced coffee may go down slightly after Ive been having it for a while. It hasnt changed at all, but the novelty factor wears off and I take it just a bit more for granted. I think its a fact of human nature, that *anything*, however good, tends to wear off a little with exposure.
But the problem with the second-best local iced coffee is that, in the last couple of months, I have noticed that I have quite strongly gone off it, so that I sometimes dont enjoy it much at all, or may enjoy it to begin with, but somehow not like it much when I get to the end.
Wondering if the way it was made had been changed, I mentioned this to the staff, but they assured me that it was exactly the same as a year or so before. I thought that maybe Id just had it too often (sometimes every day for several days running) and needed a longish break from it.
Yet Im not entirely convinced by this rationalization. I cant help wondering whether the milk has something to do with it. Now I can imagine some purists thinking at this point, "There you have it! The milk is just poisoning what might otherwise be good coffee." Yet its not that simple, at least with me.
I have a slightly strange relationship with milk. I absolutely hate a plain, unflavoured glass of milk. I had to have it often as a boy, and disliked it; but I was required to have it because it was supposedly (perhaps really) good for me. Since then I have never had it, and think it would make me feel sick now. I have no problem with milk in cooking, and I use it in small quantities on breakfast cereal or muesli, with no problems. Maybe oddly, I like cream on breakfast cereals, desserts, in iced coffee, and so on.
Yet (this is the strange bit), although I strongly dislike plain milk, I absolutely need at least a small amount of milk in my iced coffee, and it usually gives me no adverse feeling at all. To the contrary, I would not like iced coffee black at all.
I cant help wondering whether this might be tied up somehow with why I seem to have gone off this iced coffee; yet it doesnt happen with iced coffee at other shops, some of which could well use a similar amount of milk - although I dont know that for a fact - maybe this place *does* use more milk than the other places; but even if so, that wouldnt explain why, for a year or more, I was perfectly happy with the iced coffee and why that has changed only recently.
I asked them if they used a special kind of milk, such as soy milk, skinny milk, or other "special" types, which might have caused the problem (I do not much enjoy iced coffee made with skinny milk); but the milk they used seemed to be perfectly normal, standard milk. There was no reason to question the freshness of it, either.
I also notice that theres a kind of froth on top, probably a mixture of milk and coffee. I dont like this froth much, and also wonder if that could be related to it. Next time I go there, I will ask how they make that froth, and ask them if they can leave it out, and see if that makes a difference.
Anyway, I just thought Id ask about this here. Have any of the knowledgeable people here encountered a thing like this before, and do they have any clues as to why I might suddenly go off a particular iced coffee for no apparent reason?
I would be interested in anyones thoughts on this.
Thanks.
Regards,
Michael.
Comment