I love coffee. I’m drinking a hot cup while I pen this article. Roasting and grinding coffees from around the world is my hobby. Experimenting with different brewing methods in search of the perfect cup of Joe is my holy grail. I even researched planting my own coffee trees here in Orlando so that I could experience the whole process from soil to cup. A hero of mine, Heriberto Lopez, had the same idea in 1985. Mr. Lopez, who owned a coffee plantation in Venezuela, came to the United States so his son could receive treatment for a rare heart condition. He gambled some of his family fortune on growing coffee in south Florida, so that he could work in the U.S. while his son got the treatment he needed. The experts said it would never work. Heinz Wutsher, a researcher with the U.S. Department of Agriculture laboratory in Orlando said, ”I think the whole thing is a crackpot idea.” Well you know what? They were right. It failed. Coffee grows best in the bean belt, 25 degrees north, 30 degrees south latitude. Florida is technically in the belt, but has a deficiency of mountains on which to plant coffee. Mr. Lopez and I had our caffeine fueled dreams thwarted by geography and economics, but I still enjoy learning about coffee. Reading “Uncommon Grounds” by Mark Pendergrast, I was horrified to learn that coffee had been prohibited in various countries at different times. Why ban a harmless drink? Who could be so cruel? Don’t they know coffee is the elixir of Life? Well my friends, let us dive into when, where and why coffee was banned in history.
1511, Kha’ir Beg, the governor of Mecca, was cruising past a Mosque and saw some dudes getting their caffeine on so they could do some endurance praying–much like some of you would do with Mountain Dew and an all night Dungeons and Dragons session. Beg got bent out of shape for some reason, so he banned coffee under the power given to him by the Koran prohibiting wine. I know you are thinking, “How in the hell is coffee, a stimulant, anything like wine, a depressant?” I’m sure the Saudis were thinking the same thing. So Kha’ir goes to some local Persian doctors, the Hakimani brothers, and buys some expert testimony. The Hakimani boys claimed that coffee was harmful and had no legitimate medical use–a conflict of interest since coffee was used as a natural, inexpensive cure for depression as opposed to whatever expensive pharmaceuticals they were selling. Finally, the Sultan of Cairo stepped in because people were getting cranky without their morning coffee, and declared governor Beg had exceeded his authority to ban coffee and the people rejoiced. Happily, Kha’ir was caught embezzling money and was executed. I guess he skipped the part in the Koran about stealing.
Continuing in the 16th century, the next group anxious to wield the banhammer are the Italians. Christian Europe had been brawling with the Muslim Ottomans since 1591 and were a little salty. The Pope’s advisors wanted to ban coffee as the “bitter invention of Satan” because the drink was popular with the Turks. Ironic, considering coffee was banned in Mecca less than one hundred years before. Pope Clement the VIII requested a cup so that he may see what all this devilry was about and declared, “This Satan’s drink is so delicious that it would be a pity to let the infidels have exclusive use of it.” The Pope also believed that coffee was less harmful than alcohol and thus blessed the bean. Thanks to the Coffee Pope, modern Italians are free to sip espressos while riding vespas saying, “Ciao.”
The 17th century saw a new Muslim anti-coffee zealot, this time in Constantinople. In 1623, Murad IV claimed the throne of the Ottoman empire, famous for making little couches you put your feet on. So Murad quattro was a new king and usually you become king by screwing people over and crushing dissent. Coffee has been blamed/credited with fueling rabble rousers, as the king was aware. In fact, one of the HQs for planning the American Revolution took place in the “Green Dragon,” a coffee house in Boston. Americans switched to coffee from tea because screw England, and the founding fathers would drink caffeine and write kick-ass constitutions. Back to Constantinople, Murad knew coffee angers-up the blood and fuels revolutions so he banned coffee. Turns out, people really love coffee and kept drinking it despite the first offense: catching a beating. Second timers got sewn into a bag and thrown into the Bosphorus. Even with these severe punishments, Murad still had no trouble going undercover with his big ass sword, surprise beheading people he caught drinking Java. The ban ended when Murad decided to have a one man drinking contest and died of alcohol at the ripe old age of 28. Maybe he should have had coffee instead.
Moving into the next century, 1746 Sweden not only banned coffee, but coffee paraphernalia because people were abusing coffee. I don’t know how you abuse coffee other than by leaving a pot of coffee on a burner until it turns to tar. Gustav the third, king of Sweden, ordered a pseudoscience twin study to prove the harmful effects of coffee. One twin drank tea, the other coffee. They didn’t wait around to get the results because the twins lived into their 80’s. So the Swedes sent goons around anyways, kicking in doors and smashing coffee pots and confiscating coffee beans for evidence (totally not for them to consume or resell). Shockingly, people continued to consume coffee in spite of the ban. Eventually the Swedish government decided enforcement was unmanageable and repealed the bans in the 1820’s. Today Sweden has one of the highest per capita coffee consumption rates in the world.
Another jerk from the 18th century is Frederick “the Great” of Prussia. In 1777, Fred was concerned that coffee consumption was cutting into the beer profits. Beer was a local product so profits stayed in Prussia. Coffee, being an import good, caused money to flow out of the country. So he proclaimed coffee banned and told the proles to go back to drinking beer for breakfast. In true Top Man fashion, nobles were allowed to continue to drink coffee. Fred liked to drink his coffee made with champagne instead of water, in true baller fashion. Rappers take note, that is how you stupidly waste money. Drinking a hot champagny cuppa in front of the people you are telling don’t drink coffee doesn’t inspire people to respect the ban. I thought ordering a bunch of Germans to drink beer for breakfast was an easy sell, but Fred screwed it up somehow. Freddie had to rescind his order and allow the Prussians their coffee.
An article about coffee prohibition wouldn’t be complete without mentioning America, the largest coffee market in the world. Multiple attempts by moral scolds and busy bodies to shut down coffee have been mounted, but, luckily for us, they have all failed so I won’t bore you with the details. However, one man was moderately successful in cutting into American coffee consumption, C. W. Post. Post was not a mentally stable person, to put it mildly. He believed in all the quack cures of the day and Grandpa Simpson diagnoses. C.W. suffered from nervous breakdowns and became
student of John Kellogg, another cereal Barron, that taught him the dark arts of healthy eating to cure his imbalanced humours. Kellogg was a Seven Day Adventist and shunned caffeine and advised C.W. to give up coffee. C.W. became a titan of the breakfast food world because he was the first to understand the power of advertising. He spent a tremendous amount of money pushing his health foods on the public using clever ads that weren’t always completely true. Post started an ad campaign warning about the dangers of coffee and how it is basically killing you every time you take a sip. Unbeknownst to the public, C.W. couldn’t start his day without his big mug of bean juice. That didn’t stop him from telling everyone else to drink Postum, the coffee substitute made from wheat bran, wheat, and molasses. Bizarrely the slogan of Postum was “There’s a Reason.” I guess that did something for the chumps of the 20th century because they bought the stuff. Postum sales surged during WWII as coffee was diverted to the front lines, because nothing kills Nazis better than a conscripted 18 year old with coffee jitters and a M1 garand. If you would like to try this
abomination of a drink, you can still purchase Postum on Amazon.
21st century America has not banned coffee, thank the Coffee Pope, but we do have prohibition of drugs. The arguments for caffeine prohibition of the past are the same arguments used to prohibit drugs today: “The money flows out of the country;” “ It makes God angry when you use an intoxicant;” “Undesirables use it and listen to music I find offensive;” “ It causes crime and dissent among the masses;” “Drugs have no legitimate medical use.” These arguments are as hollow now as they were 500 years ago and the banners are as big of hypocrites as ever. Three out of our four past presidents are known to have used drugs and yet happily continued the war on drugs. The true reason for drug prohibition is power and that is one hell of a drug. Currently in the 103rd year of drug prohibition, America has been slow to reverse course, but public opinion is changing and that is what ultimately lead to the reversal of coffee prohibition in Mecca, Sweden, and Prussia. So the next time you’re in the breakroom having a cup of coffee with a coworker, share what you have learned about the tyrants that banned the drink they are enjoying. Maybe you’ll help turn the tide of public opinion.
Comments
390 responses to “Coffee & Prohibition”
*cradles second cup of coffee for the morning, wills unpleasant things at whoever would take it away*
Civilized men drink tea.
Both? Both.
Not at the same time, of course. Let’s be reasonable
Coffee for me.
I tried throwing a coffee bag into a cup of weak coffee. It was unpleasant.
tea bag
Goddamnit, today is not my day
How does tomorrow look? 😉
Yeah, I’ve tried tea-coffee blends and they are just…nasty.
I’m off for a week vacationing in Santa Barbara starting tomorrow.
I know, I know, life is tough. Pray for me!
You don’t get to sue McD’s after you do that…
When I say “Oolong,” you say “Yes, please.”
I drank oolong at one time because it was good for eczema.
Don’t insult me.
I am not Civil(ized).
*starts to counter, considers size of British Empire, stops*
Hard to argue with results.
Mountain Dew and D&D. Minus 20 charisma points.
Ot but the reaction to the Charlottesville incident still crazy. http://www.thedailybeast.com/its-time-for-taylor-swift-to-denounce-her-neo-nazi-admirers
http://www.avclub.com/article/1940s-america-fought-nazis-pop-cultureand-2017s-am-259456
Nazis are in the streets, peering in our homes! Stay alert!
*shreek and Tony twice as scared, further barricade Tonys mum’s basement*
I initially read that as “peeing in our homes”.
That costs extra.
“Mommy, will the Nazis get us?”
“Not unless somebody invents a time machine, dear. Now go to sleep.”
This is turning into the commie scare of the 50s, except the commie scare actually had some semblance of reality to base upon.
Has the Daily Beast explicitly denounced Hitler?
That’s what I thought.
Does Trumphitler count?
Excellent article, but don’t forget Charles II of England and his ban on coffeehouses, but that wasn’t because of Puritanism (you may have heard Charles wasn’t a Puritan) but because opponents of the government hung out at coffeehouses and traded news, gossip, and snark about the royal court.
I had to trim the article down. It could have easily been twice as long. I threw in a quick blurb about the Green Dragon just to touch on the British crackdown on coffee.
“Oh you can search far and wide,
You can drink the whole town dry,
But you’ll never find a beer so brown,
Oh you’ll never find a beer so brown,
As the one we drink in our hometown,
As the one we drink in our hometown.
You can drink your fancy ales,
You can drink them by the flagon,
But the only brew for the brave and true…
..Comes from the Green Dragon!!”
+1 gay hobbit table-dance
Coffee has caffeine in it and is made by slaves. We have to ban it.
In other news:
Iran out of dollars, wants more
Hey, mr. president, the money that the last president gave us is gone. Please send more.
/Iran
Restart? They stopped?
Apparently the Mullahs dont read the news.
Extortionist – “Pay us or we will fuck around with newcular bombs!”
Trump – ” How about I shoot a missile up your ass instead?”
Worked on the last few guys. *Kick pebble. Hangs gay*
Yeah, I don’t think this President is likely to deliver pallets of cash to them.
That’s likely very close to what Trump would actually say.
BTW, where are all the dicks who said Trump was approaching the Nork problem in the wrong way? Why is it that they all of a sudden stopped talking about this?
He stopped allowing North Korean journalists into the Press Briefings.
If you would like to try this abomination of a drink, you can still purchase Postum on Amazon.
My boss is LDS, we have postum all over the breakroom.
How is it? The ingredients make it sound like drinking a bran muffin.
not far off, though decidedly less pleasant.
This is a major reason I can’t trust Mormons.
The fuck do they have against coffee?
Caffeine is a stimulant so prohibited.
More religion and coffee: Jews had a big debate whether coffee is kosher for Passover and maxwell house hired some rabbis to settle it. The debate was, is the coffee bean a legume. It’s not; it’s the seed of a fruit, we just call it a bean.
And the legume thing is only relevant to Ashkenazi Jews. We Mizrahi Jews don’t worry about shit like that, leavening is leavening.
Thanks for the info. My wife is very proud of her Ashkenazi Jew ancestry. It’s like .6 percent or something according to 23andMe.
You mean besides the fact it smells bad and tastes terrible?
Dead. to. me.
Reminds me of the energy drink panic of my teen years. Spike still requires a ID to buy in a lot of places.
I don’t particularly like coffee, but I hear it is the single densest source of antioxidants in the American diet, and so I drink it every morning.
It smells wonderful and tastes awful. I put milk in it to dilute the bitterness.
The smell is great, and does evoke some childhood nostalgia as my dad was a heavy coffee drinker. But you are correct, the smell is a trick to get you to taste it. Much like my wife says about my La Croix.
Now that’s a euphemism!
I feel the opposite way, that it smells awful and tastes pretty good.
Maybe I shouldn’t have ever read “memoir from antproof case” …
Plus other health benefits
You want to know what has an incredible amount of antioxidants?
Urine.
so put that in your cup and drink it!
Patches O’Houlihan agrees.
The Germans know more than we think.
Black tea makes me sick, no idea why. I can drink, do drink, at least one cup of coffee every morning, sometimes two and that’s it. I can’t drink the stuff in the afternoon or I’ll get all wired up and lose sleep.
Three 8 ounce cups of coffee every day:
7 am – coffee with 60 grams of milk and a serving of protein powder. Immersion blend until smooth and goddamn delicious.
10 am – coffee with heavy cream
3 pm – moar coffee with heavy cream
My first cup is more like 16 oz, and then if I have a 2nd, it’s half that, so about the same.
how much cream do you put in with your coffee?
A serving, which is two tablespoons, which is 30 grams.
Thanks, I eat keto and so try to keep cream in my coffee for the fat, but wasn’t sure about my ratios. I have a 16oz coffee with 3 tablespoons of heavy cream in it, so I am not far off.
Sounds about right to me. Have you tried bulletproof coffee? I think Tundra mentions below that he puts coconut oil in his. I haven’t tried it, but a lot of folks are putting oil or butter in their coffee these days.
Ugh. My wife wants to try this. I’m having trouble at the thought of a bunch of butter in my coffee. I prefer a protein latte.
I will occasionally put a pad of grassfed butter in my coffee with the cream, but while I am wanting to make sure to keep my fat intake elevated, I have been told that bulletproof coffee is a bit overkill (generally calls for cream, butter, and MCT oil). Though I do have coconut oil so I should at least try it as a butter alternative and see how it tastes.
Putting oil in coffee sounds awful to me. Coffee is already oily without adding more.
Listen at this conversation. How long can it be before Glibs are sipping cocktails with little umbrellas in them?
Hey! it’s 5 o’clock somewhere man ….
milk is an emulsion of oil and water, so if you put cream in you’re already adding oil. Most of the powdered creamers are oil based as well.
Can I get olive oil out of a cow also? I’m thinking if I can get milk, water, and oil from a cow, it’s time to get a cow *measuring unused closet to see if cow will fit*.
You can probably get cow oil out of a cow.
NO, you can get Butter out of a Cow. And for most culinary purposes Butter and Olive Oil are interchangable
Bulletproof coffee’s okay, but Bomb-proof Coffee’s where it’s at. Amazing stuff.
Depends on how much masturbating Mr. Raven has been up to lately.
What flavor protein powder goes well with coffee?
Bacon?
Come to think of it, hold the coffee.
Figures someone’s done it.
Mmmmm bacon
if you’re a pure whey guy, it’s OK with iced coffee, but I’m not sure any of the flavored ones would work.
I do straight casein more than whey, but the flavor of the casein is too strong for the coffee to cover it, so it’s pretty disgusting.
Depends on taste, for sure. I had been using this, but they recently reformulated and now it’s cabbage.
After much trial and error, I’ve settled on this, but Mr. Riven was hugely not a fan. so he gets this, instead. He says it tastes like hot chocolate + coffee.
Riven… have you been hanging out with John?
Well, it’s aSouthpark reference. I didn’t realize that was one of his favorite words. 😉
And here I thought it was an auto-correct/John-o for garbage.
covfefe?
Well, I hope you learned a valuable lesson about thinking today.
The best protein supplements I’ve ever had (and at 59 years of age, I’ve had a lot of ’em) come from here. Also, way less expensive than most of the over-processed junk that’s out there.
I’ll be up for breakfast coffee. that sounds great.
How can any of you stand the flavor?
Got milk?
A pinch of salt tames the bitterness. Then add cream.
Holy crap. Someone else who salts their coffee. Cthulhu bless you with his many tentacles, sir.
I use sea salt.
I have some stupid fancy black salt that I got for free at this infused olive oil place nearby. Haven’t even cracked it open yet, but I might start using it in coffee on the weekends.
Different salts are good on different foods.
We use sea salt and now the wife bought some of that pink himilayan salt. I never use just regular table salt, the sea salt is much better.
That pink color?
Indian infantryman blood, dude. Just sayin’.
The pink salt is good on veggies.
Tulip is a chick, I believe.
But Ma’am is patronizing, you patriarchal shitlord.
May Cthulhu bless *her* with his many tentacles, then! If you know what I mean. (And I know you do)
Now you’re talking!
*room full of Japanese men nod vigorously*
Any images of said blessing?
None that are SFW…
That’s what I’m talkin’ about…
This is settled science. Why would anyone deny themselves salt in their coffee?
Salt’s actually an old line cook/front counter staff trick at restaurants. Learned that from a Chinese buddy of mine back in high school (his parents owned a Chinese resto in Edmonton, Alberta). His Dad also showed me how to stir-fry over a 100,000 BTU weapons-grade (and HUGE) gas-fired commercial wok. I’ve dreamed of getting such a set-up for my perfect fantasy kitchen ever since . . .
OMWC has this Thai Wok Burner that apparently is no longer available. It is truly amazing.
It has flavor, you wouldn’t understand. I like mine black. With a pinch of salt sometimes.
I like mine black, with a second cup.
Black, sometimes with coconut oil.
This^^ Usually with a 6th or 7th cup.
The flavor is the point, man!
I’ve been a black coffee drinker since my youth. To my mind, if the coffee you’re drinking doesn’t taste best on its own, you’re drinking crap coffee. Or you just aren’t that into coffee, which is fine.
Correct. My wife doesn’t drink coffee, but some of the stuff I’ve roasted has her sniffing my mug.
/not a euphemism
I live in hilly temperate climate(Illinois so might as well be Venezuela right?). I want to get some magic beans and try to grow now.
You can’t grow coffee in IL, sorry man. Maybe inside, but I would think humidity is a concern.
Greenhouse trees? How big of a greenhouse would you need to get a reliable supply?
Not sure. They get pretty big, so I guess it would depend on the yield. I personally have never heard of anyone doing it though.
Especially since it won’t be too long before the forclosure sale on Venezula starts…
I get a lot of my coffee from Brazil for a lot cheaper than it costs here. I’m out right now, so I just buy the Mexican stuff at Walmart, which is decent for the price.
Brazil has been the dominant producer of coffee since it became a commercial crop. Also they consume more per capita than any other country.
Yeah, but they drink it like espresso in tiny little cups. The first time I got served it, I was like ‘WTF is this, I ordered coffee?’.
Not sure you could do as well as the natural growers. IIRC coffee needs high altitudes (for the UV?) and is somewhat exacting with respect to humidity.
Coffee trees are suppose to be kept small. FYI: one tree yields one pound of coffee per year and takes five years to mature. It’s really more economical to buy it.
You’re out of the bean belt, but give it a shot.
Not for long according to Climate Changers. I’m investing heavily in coffee and olive cultivation. *puts foil hat on and goes hoeing*
You gangsta!
PimpingFarming ain’t easy cuz.Yeah, but only about by around 1500 miles.
I’ve just never been able to get past the bitterness. Tea for me or diet Coke.
Speaking of diet Coke. Crook County; You do know we rebelled over less? Right?
Now this is how history should be delivered.
Bravo, Florida Man!
THank you. Coffee was considered essential for the war effort because it was often the only warm thing the troops got in the trenches. The downside is the troops came back with a taste for instant coffee. *spits*
Thank you Riven for the pictures and formatting. Also, a big thanks to my friend Ayesha for proof reading this for me.
Anytime!
I love coffee. I had to give it up because it started triggering migraines. That first week without the go juice was shitty.
Really? A week without the go juice and I don’t get shitty. That stuff is like roided up Ex Lax.
I do miss the coffee enema.
“Too hot?”
“No, too sweet!”
Coffee Colonic, do you even alliterate, bro?
Odd, that’s the same reason I dislike trade.
I’m considering doing a coffee trilogy. Coffee & trade (particularly protectionism & cartels) is one of my ideas. Thoughts?
The economics of substitute goods (coffee and coca, for example) should be relatively simple to work in – unless coca doesn’t use the same land as coffee.
Then there are the oddities of the Haitian coffee trees. Fun Fact – Haiti has the tallest coffee trees in the wold – because they’re not bothering to maintain them. The only reason the trees are still there is because they can collect some form of agricultural subsidy for the land, even if they produce no crop if it is being used to grow coffee trees.
It’s mostly NGO’s f’ing it up. Don’t spoil my next feature.
Would there be good material in an article on coffee substitutes through the ages? Obviously Germany in two World Wars is the best known example but there had to be others.
Not sure about “libertarian” angle, short of a case study in ‘can market provide a substitute, or are there cases where it’s straight-out impossible’?
Chicory in the South during the Civil War.
And in the infamous “Camp” Coffee, still sold in the UK.
There is a case for fraud and the boom-bust cycle of coffee. People adulterated (still do premium beans) with cheaper beans (robusta) or using chickory or peas or whatever they could roast and pass off. Coffee didn’t get really good in the USA until the 60-70’s with Hippy coffee in California.
What’s everyone’s favorite coffee making method?
I have one of these, and it makes a decent cup. I used to have one of these, but it was kind of a pain in the ass.
Thanks Riven.
I’m always happy to help! (I think someone else approved your double-link, though.)
The aeropress always looks intimidating to me, especially pre-coffee at 6:30 am.
Get the grind right, and it’s terrific for a good strong Americano – or just about anything non-espresso.
To get the grind right, y’all need something like a Hario burr mill, but given your alleged status as an undead-American in the morning, you’d probably need to grind the coffee the night before.
Grind it the night before? You monster!
Easy champ. BTW: love the Earlie avatar.
Thanks, it to forever to did a pic of him in this hat.
“Keep drunk and carry arms.”
It’s easy-peasy. I highly recommend it.
The aeropress is really easy to use, if not the easiest to clean. If you want a simple way for good morning coffee without as much acidic bite, you could go cold extract. I have a little ceramic pitcher with a micro screen insert that works well to make a cold extract concentrate you mix with hot water in the morning to your preference.
The Aeropress is good. I like mine, but the one cup at a time thing is a drawback.
My favorite method is pourover. I use a Chemex pot and filters, which takes out a lot of the bitterness. I have a pretty good burr grinder and programmable electric kettle to go with it.
I was reading something, somewhere, about how coffee houses in Europe kicked off the enlightenment. Since before that, people were just drinking 2% beer all day.
Don’t listen to that, it was propaganda by Baristas who were consoling themselves after getting unmarketable degrees.
Beer legitimately was the breakfast beverage of choice until coffee replaced it in Europe. When people are sober, they realize how badly they’re getting screwed.
Drunk on 2% Beer? I’m incredulous.
Well, to be fair, the small beer was a way of ensuring your drinks weren’t going to give you gastro-enteritis. Coffee made with hot water of course, would have had a similar effect on reducing the danger of a debilitating attack of Montezuma’s Revenge.
The current fad of cold-pressed coffee would have decimated the coffee-addicted back then, of course.
cold-pressed coffee?
That sounds disgusting. I don’t know anything about it, but it sounds even worse than hot-brewed.
It’s fine, but I can’t be assed to wait around for a day for a jug of a drink I can make with a kettle and some ice cubes in 5 minutes.
Cold-brewed is quite a bit less bitter than hot-brewed, in my experience.
When I brew hot, I just take the water to about 200 degrees – not quite boiling – and brew with that. It might be cargo-cult-coffee-prep, but I find that works just as well in avoiding a lot of the bitterness.
If bitter is an issue, put eggshells in your coffee.
Actually, it seems like people who don’t like coffee like the cold-brew. It’s really, really smooth tasting with little or no bitterness. But like #6 says, you have to decide you’d like some cold-pressed coffee about 8 – 10 hours before you intend to drink it. And then you’ve still got to filter out the grounds. It’s a lot of trouble when you can just stick ice cubes in strong coffee.
… or get a home equity loan and drive to Starbucks …
I have a cold brew system, but don’t use it for that reason. It takes about 10 minutes for me to make a cup, which I’m fine with because coffee is my break from this mad world.
I’d drink 2% beer if I didn’t have to tell the bartender what I thought about racism.
Well, water had a nasty tendency to make you shit yourself until you died, so…
Oh man, I love coffee. It’s a family tradition. My grandfather would be out mowing the lawn on a hot Saturday in July, come in, and make a fresh pot of coffee. I learned how to use a coffee maker when I was 8. I’ve had about a pot a day before I leave the house for the morning since I was 12.
Nowadays I’ve cut down to about a pot a day total. We were a french press household for awhile but have gone back to an automatic drip just because of the volume that we drink. But the absolute best coffee making device I’ve ever used was an AeroPress. That thing is amazing.
Aeropress is great. Way easier to clean and makes better coffee than a French press.
I was super skeptical because it looked like something you’d buy in a As Seen on TV store, but it came highly recommended by the Black Rifle Coffee Company guys, so I gave it a whirl and haven’t looked back. Just the difference between a cup made with that and a cup from the Bunn drip we’ve got is like night and day.
What’s your recipe?
I’ll dampen the filter, throw two scoops of coffee in, get water to a rolling boil in an electric kettle and then give it a couple of minutes to cool down a little, fill the cylinder, stir for about 30 seconds, and then plunge. Top it off with hot water to hit about 8 oz.
I’ve tried some of the other methods, like the upside-down brewing, but the way I do it is a minimum of fuss while still coming out decent.
I do the upside down, 3 minute brew. With some Kirkland Costa Rican it’s delicious.
I’m gonna try the upside down again. When I did it before it really did come out pretty damn tasty. It’s just that I get nervous with the press upside down on my counter with all the various creatures in my house that knock things over.
I’ve only knocked it over once. Leave it in the sink while it’s brewing if you are worried about it.
That’s a good idea.
I use a french press but hate the grit in the bottom of my cup.
I’m tellin’ you, man. Aeropress. It’s like a french press without the grit. Also, I think it cuts out some of the acrid flavor the last cup or so of french press coffee seems to get by sitting on the grounds so long.
I will definitely check it out.
If you’re going to go with an aeropress, get a good thermometer.
I use a French press primarily and Moka pot secondarily. I have a keurig for parties.
I just use a drip coffee maker, 99% of the time. I set it up the night before because I am a zombie in the morning. Love my Moka pot, though; I only use it when I’m the only one who wants coffee.
French presses seem neat, but ain’t nobody got time for that!
You say that, but in my case I found that a french press with an electric kettle was actually faster than the drip maker we had. Of course, a programmable beats everything. There’s nothing like staggering downstairs and smelling coffee already made.
Stuff like a french press and a moka pot are strictly weekend coffee makers to me. If I don’t have a time-crunch in the morning, I don’t mind taking the extra time to make an especially tasty cup or two of coffee.
I hear you. That’s why we dumped the french press and got a drip. It’s not automatic, but it heats water ahead of time so it may as well be. Mornings at my place trend hectic, so being able to make a lot of coffee quickly and without much involvement is a big help.
A hotel I stayed in recently had the coolest coffeemaker. You selected the type of coffee you wanted via a touchscreen, it ground from one of several hoppers and delivered a shockingly good cup.
We have one of those at work. It breaks all the time, so when no one is looking, I punch it.
Ha!
Yeah, the last day I was there it broke after my second cup. Disappointed!
Well, the great thing about a French press is that you can make about 6 mugs of good coffee in a proper-sized one, and you get from pouring the water in, to pouring the coffee out in about 30-40 seconds, which – as long as you’re not a morning zombie – isn’t at all awful.
I’m not a connoisseur when it comes to coffee. A drip coffee maker is good enough. French press for dinner parties.
So has anyone heard the news that Trump is going to appoint a science denier to head Agriculture?
Is he an evil AGW denier, or does he deny the Settled Science on evil, poisonous GMOs?
He’s a straight up science denier, evil as they come. He’s obviously going to allow poisoning of the children for fun and profit.
Why does Agriculture need a head?
How are you supposed to sell cabbages or lettuce without heads?
Poor Freddy Der Grosse, if only he’d avoided war and coffee bans and stuck to flute concerti.
A much better example – short and sweet.
So Florida Man, what kind of roaster are you using, and what’s your preferred bean?
Back when I was still drinking coffee, I used the Fresh Roast SR-500, and loved getting good quality Sumatran beans. I used to have a good source for Monsooned Malabar and Eithiopian Maragogipe beans as well, which were also great choices.
Behmor 1600 plus. I really like African coffees in general and Ethiopian in particular. I usually get a variety from sweet Maria’s.
Very nice, you went for the big rig. Most of my later orders were from the Coffee Project. They would have some cheap bundles and pre-blends at times, and occasionally would get their hands on some small batch single farmhouse beans.
Sweet Maria’s is a great resource for anyone interested in home roasting. I started using a whirly-pop, then air popper and finally got a drum roaster. It’s okay for non commercial roasting.
Real men roast coffee with a zippo lighter and a spoon. Or was that heroin? I get those confused
Man it’s crazy how many shitty white people there are in this country
Come home from tipping a few too many (vacation for me boys), and that is staring at me on my Derpbook page from my Nephew. Raised by his single mother, my sister, and a total fucking idiot. Still, he’s family. Should I go total crazy Uncle on his ass?
Tell the little fucker he’s a piece of shit racist who better learn to treat and evaluate people as individuals or Uncle Staraffin is gonna curb stomp his racist ass.
That should do it.
Which of course would be ironic, Uncle Straffin’ being in what I’d call a *real* (if quite benign) racist country.
‘Uncle Straff’s gone native!’
That’s some purty good racism you got there. Go on…
Not as direct, but I hope that gets the point across.
“Listen, son, trust me when I say that you don’t want the kind of chicks that are gonna be attracted to that kind of virtue-signalling.”
A simple “true, but problem isn’t that they’re white, it’s that they are shitty” should suffice.
Of course his next post is something like :
I mean, I don’t even FUCKING IDENTIFY AS FUCKING WHITE but if you FUCKING INSULT ME FOR BEING IT THEN I GUESS I’M IT ENOUGH TO TELL YOU TO FUCK OFF.
It’s almost like their whole point was to turn non-racists into racists by forcing them to pick a side, and by … making the supposedly non-racist side functionally racist. And it’s working. 🙁
You can’t have a mass movement without a devil.
‘Yeah, you’re one of them’. That should trigger him.
This is the best response, excepting the fact that it may be too strong to be said to family (although YMMV of course).
Yes, this is true. Maybe something more like, ‘Don’t you think it’s racist to single out white people, out of all peoples, as being racist? Is this what you really believe, or are you just virtue signaling?’
Just repeat his screed and replace ‘white people’ with slant, spic, nigger, etc.
Then tell him to shut his bigot mouth.
It is spelled wypipo
21st century America has not banned coffee, thank the Coffee Pope, but we do have prohibition of drugs.
Hey, Eddie, can you guys trade in Commie Pope for a Pot Pope already? (Pope Pot? too Khmer?)
I am quite certain if he tried a puff, he would decide that Deus definitely Vult.
I almost put a disclaimer in for the coffee pope sense he forbade Jews from selling new goods in the HRE, but then I was like “eh, it’s about coffee not anti-semitism” and dropped it.
Eh, HRE and/or Catholic Church without petty Jew oppression (used goods? fine. new goods? fuck you, Christ-killer!) is like a coffee made from acorns!
The question is, Can the Pot Pope make a good pot pie? Disclaimer *Please don’t give to Maureen Dowd*
Making pot pie is wymminz work, and thus out of Papal jurisdiction (until we get United Catholic Church or somesuch).
White supremacist leader at Charlottesville protest revealed to be former Occupy activist, Obama supporter.
False flag! Or just a narcissistic shitheel who wants to put himself at the heart of airy-headed cotton-candy political movements.
Hey, you know who else was a Socialist before becoming a Fascist?
Every single one of them, eventually?
How dare you send me PanZ a reply like that. I’m on you now. You are f‑‑‑ing with me now. Let’s see who you are Watch your back, bitch.
Call me. Don’t be afraid, you piece of s‑‑‑. Stand up. If you don’t call, you’re just afraid.
I already know where you live, I’m on you. You might as well call me. You will see me. I promise. Bro.
Far as I know, ole Badolph was never a Socialist, he jumped from mushy Conservatism (with Jew-hate) straight into Fascism (with Jew-hate).
Not every Statist is a Socialist, though converse is true (Fuck you, anarcho-Marxists!)
Hitler was never a conservative. He hated the junkers, the officer class, and all financiers and capitalists. The only way Hitler is a conservative is if you think racism and anti-Semitism is an inherently conservative thing. Which of course, it isn’t.
The big little mustache man may never have been a proper socialist himself, but his party was thick with them. Goebbels and Röhm were pretty adamant about keeping the socialist in the National Socialist German Workers’ Party.
Indeed, IIRC one of the reason for Night of the Long Knives was to placate the Establishment and demonstrate that no, we aren’t going Commie up in this bitch.
Yes, the night of the long knives was a two-fer: calm the anxieties of the establishment and dispose of the only man who could challenge Hitler for leadership of the party.
That doesn’t mean he wasn’t a socialist. It means he wanted to maintain his hold on power. Think Stalin and Trotsky.
The Nazis were revolutionary socialists, through and through. It’s all right there in their platforms and their policies. They wanted total control of all aspects of national life concentrated under a central authority.
Any kind of argument that Hitler wasn’t a socialist is just the standard “not real socialism!” nonsense. If Hitler isn’t a socialist, neither was Chavez, or Castro, or any number of nationalist socialists.
Every Facist?
I think that is a distinction without much of a difference.
So much like reformed drug addicts who end up just trading one addiction for another.
Newsflash: All Nazis are schizophrenics
Punch a schizophrenic!
So, that would be a big deal if it had been an antifa nut driving over people. CNN *just another crazy guy off his meds, nothing to see here, let’s move along*.
Collective guilt is a one-way ratchet Hyp.
I thought schizophrenia usually didn’t present until about 20.
So, the guy is still on the same side? Shocking.
Is breitbard reliable though?
Not 100%, but then again, compared to most outlets, yeah, pretty reliable.
Accidental libertarianism is still libertarianism. Well played, Trump.
OK, if he is gonna throw his toys out of the pram every time the media pokes his ego, I say, let’s go full retard! After six months of Nazi taunts there’ll probably be like three non-military government agencies left!
I don’t know why but I find this comment irresistibly hilarious. I’m literally cracking up in the middle of the office.
A visual of a screaming Baby Trump throwing a tantrum while on his walkies really strikes home, doesn’t it?
I remember in the budget battle of 1995, Time had a rendition of Gingrich as a baby having a tantrum because Clinton didn’t want to discuss the budget on the plane back from the Yitzhak Rabin funeral.
Good, get rid of more useless signaling crap.
Trump accidentally suspends corporate cronyism, left shits pants? Wait, those are evil corporations, Dow Chemical? They really don’t have a clue, do they?
I wish sometimes that I could be a straight partisan, because life would be so much simpler if I didn’t have to worry about consistency or logic. Now if we only start seeing some more federal bureaucrat resignations, than I’ll really know that accidental libertarianism is a valid political strategy.
FTFY.
Everyone is a normie to someone.
I’m not sure I understand this statement. Normies are defined statistically.
There is a mainstream in every society, and people who are outlying. I don’t think the mainstream views the outliers as “normies”? I think they view them as outliers?
Look at someone who is a straight up practicing hardcore ancap, and is actively trying to violently overthrow his local government. To him, we are normies.
Imagine if Glibertarians were advising Trump. That would be the ultimate lulz. I bet we could make the entirety of the left die of cardiac arrest or suicide in about a week.
As my inner political nihilist grows stronger and deeper, the more I’m loving this presidency. Having Glibs in Trump’s inner circle would make the plebeian hostile takeover even more satisfying.
Then just wait until he chooses Glibs as his top advisers. I’m already fondly imagining the part where bureaucrats are hurled from their desks onto lawns followed by all of their office belongings and building of former agencies are converted into bars and bordellos. DEA is first, followed quickly by FDA and IRS. We’re going to balance that budget.
Can I push granny off a cliff?
There really is very little for me to reasonably dislike about this presidency.
Yes, it’s low-rent and tawdry, the cast is for the most part unimpressive and venal, and it’s demonstrating to voters on all sides that yes, having your lives controlled by the government is both inglorious and humiliating, delivering none of the certainty and safety a well-ordered administration claims to offer.
On the up-side, Trump is at the present demonstrating what looks like preternatural competence (compared to his predecessors) on the matter of foreign policy most of the time – I hope I don’t have to revise that opinion when he commits us to more boots on the ground in a real war zone.
With a few hiccups here and there, all of which is covered by Ron Paul and nobody else, he’s mostly stayed away from the insane foreign policy of the political establishment. I hope it continues.
I can think of one thing. But it’s not a big thing. It’s rather gnome like.
If Roy Moore ends up taking the gnome’s spot, I think it’ll be a net gain for liberty overall. Yeah, he’s super SoCon, but he also is a major advocate for the supremacy of the States’ power over the Federal Gov’t. We need more of those kinds of voices in the Senate.
Then hopefully someone eventually muzzles the gnome for three more years.
Trump could literally back public healthcare and the left would scream that he’s doing it to find ways to kill people.
It’s the same horseshit with the violence at Charlottesville, it’s all about who is doing it rather than what they’re doing.
There’s not many better ways to kill people than public healthcare. And you can do it while pretending to care.
His FDA commissioner is starting to reverse Obama’s boneheaded policies on e-cigs, too.
It won’t long, sigh… madman in charge of the country, dead children in streets, dogs and cats sleeping together, locusts…
Finally, it’s taken long enough….
I really wish the GOPe and Big Pharma didn’t go apeshit about the CATO guy O’Neill possibly getting the FDA job and threatening their racket, but I’ll admit that Gottlieb has done a good job.
Whatever happened to Big Ben? Has he converted that big pyramid thing in Las Vegas into grain storage yet?
Just looked it up. I’m not exactly a Bible truther, but why haven’t I’ve heard about this before, hilarious.
I think he is napping somewhere.
Now he’s got to come up with some new dazzler to keep the slack-jawed media commentariat distracted.
My humble submission would be a Capitol Building version of MST3K, where they take highlights of C-SPAN, and have Trump and a couple of the quicker-witted executive staffers channeling the spirits of Joel, Crow and Tom Servo.
I’d pay to watch that.
I also wonder, especially recently – if Trump created a Youtube Channel, and addressed the nation every Thursday night or something like that, a la FDR … would they block his channel for ‘hate speech’?
Considering that YouTube clearly doesn’t care about ratings or making any kind of money from wrong-thinking people, I’d say that’s a strong possibility.
I love how the Social Media President is a 70 year old loudmouth, while people swooned over Young Articulate Black Man™ being interviewed by youtubers and have someone tweet for him.
I think Milo would be pretty good a riffing.
Oh come on EPA, do something stupid, come on, do it…
Isn’t the problem that groups like the EPA only do stupid things?
If Trump keeps hosting pressers himself, I hope he continues with the staccato delivery and false starts. Watching him bowl over journalists from his podium is marvelous.
Has Iceland Eliminated Down Syndrome Through Abortion?
Snopes being Snopes.
Well, apart from only eliminating it for the next 6-8 months.
And of course, once 85% of the child-bearing-age adults start virtue-signalling and shaming the other 15%, pure peer pressure will push the percentage being screened up to near 100%.
Then, the system gets to eugenic properly.
To channel Ben Affleck, “It’s just fucking gross, man.”
There is no condition or disease that cant be eliminated by killing off all of it’s victims.
Just 85% of of them, so no problem.
i’m not sure the message they’re trying to convey is the one received.
In light of the mass stupidity on display, I think everyone should read / reread The True Believer and ponder how well it applies to current events. I think you’ll be shocked at the accuracy.
“Hatred is the most accessible and comprehensive of all the unifying agents. Mass movements can rise and spread without belief in a god, but never without a belief in a devil.”
“Glory is largely a theatrical concept. There is no striving for glory without a vivid awareness of an audience… The desire to escape or camouflage their unsatisfactory selves develops in the frustrated a facility for pretending — for making a show — and also a readiness to identify themselves wholly with an imposing spectacle.”
For your suggestion to be effective there would have to be a lot more self-awareness in the world than there is now.
Consider the currently popular screeching about how all white people are racist pieces of shit.
I meant it more as a suggestion to the glibs as an explanation of current events. The motivations of people who want to screw with others can seem quite foreign.
I understand. I am just pointing out that like Atlas Shrugged, 1984, Brave New World etc most people would see it as an instruction manual.
I will claim the award for the bravest deed here, equivalent to reading a SugarFree story beginning to end, followed by clicking on a Heroic Mulatto link.
I actually drank some Kopi Luwak.
Meh.
Shitty then?
“I actually drank some Kopi Luwak.”
Kudos to you for even knowing what that is.
Reminds me of one of my favorite coffee haunts back in the day. It was a little money laundering front called the Drip Stick, they were open until 1:00 AM weekdays, and until 4:00 AM Friday and Saturday. They were located right in an area full of bars and night clubs, and the house coffee was Jamaican Blue Mountain (supposedly, it tasted damned good, so it was at least a high quality counterfeit) that they sold for $10 a pound to take home, or $2 a cup with free refills to drink in store. We used to go and close down a bar, then go sit in the coffee shop drinking coffee for 2 hours before going home.
I almost wept the first time we left the bar and walked to the coffee shop to find it closed.
I left it untitled to see if anyone recognized the palm civet. It’s not a cat, damn it!
I did, which is why it reminded me about that crappy coffee.
Oh I recognized it. That’s the coffee poopin’ critter, right?
I wonder who the first person was that had the bright idea of brewing catshit and drinking it.
Like the invention of haggis, it involved alcohol and a dare.
I had that during as coffee tasting – the local hipsters called it cupping or something like that – utterly unremarkable. And expensive.
There is elephant equivalent too and it’s hella expensive.
Probably something to do with the startlingly large volume of elephant shit you have to sift thru’ to get the coffee beans.
Mandatory mental health treatment for racism! We need a racism Czar, a bureau of racism, racism police, and an entire cronyized treatment centers for racism! And we have to make it easy for people to report a family member racist.
Your daughter or cousin ate your pop tart while you were taking out the trash? That’s racism!, call 1-800-REPORT A RACIST, THAT’S 1-800 REPORT A RACIST!
” PunkinPi (1,886 posts)
How America Spreads the Disease that is Racism by not Confronting Racist Family Members and Friends
Racism is complex in scope because it is both a mental illness and a value. In order words, it is a valued, sheltered, and protected mental illness. One might even say it has been incubated and allowed to fester throughout the course of American history.
Mental illnesses are health conditions involving changes in thinking, emotion or behavior (or a combination of these). Racism meets those criteria.
Like all illnesses, it needs to be treated in order for it to be cured. The problem, is that we do not see racism as a problem, because we do not see it for what it is — an infectious disease that has been an epidemic plaguing our nation.
[see link for Racism Scale, couldn’t get image to embed]If you fall below “awareness”, then this is a red flag that racism is a problem for you. If it is not a problem for you, but find that it is a problem for your family members and/or friends, then it’s time to address it or it will continue to spread throughout America.
Like alcoholism, an alcoholic cannot thrive without their enablers. It is the same white Americans who enable their relatives and friends who are racist. It is important to identify and recognize that racism is a mental illness and recommend that individual to a psychotherapist as needed.”
I lost count of the straw men in that screed.
It’s classic DU. They’ve been competing hard for the last few days to see who can exude the most white guilt.
I normally check over there for a derp post or two, and I did look this morning but it was so over the top that I couldn’t take it.
I swear before god on the souls of my current and future children that I will break the nose of each and every person who attempts to show me where I fall on a “racism scale”, spreadsheet, flowchart, or other organizational document.
Interestingly, if you swap “racism” for “Progressivism”, it works pretty well.
Check out the part where he says that someone cannot be an alcoholic without enablers. That’s completely untrue, I’ve known alcoholics who did that on their very own. Unless liquor stores are enablers. Then I guess he’s advocating we go back to prohibition.
But these are things the progs would absolutely do without a 2nd thought. Remember when Obama wanted doctors to ask their patients if they own any guns? I’ve never had a doctor to ask me that, but if they did, I’d tell them to fuck off and find a different doctor.
fun fact: Charlottesville, hate crimes are public health issue, experts say
http://www.cnn.com/2017/08/15/health/charlottesville-hate-crimes-public-health-bn/index.html
LET”S GET READY TO HEAD DEEEEEEEEEEESK!
I don’t like public health people. They’re almost always SJWs with pedigree that they think gives them authority to social engineer everything.
Yep, this is exactly the way they think. But to give them a break, all leftists think like that. If they can’t oppress you in the name of public health and safety, how are they going to get away with it and come off looking like the good guys? I mean because no one can be against protecting the public. People could eat lead crayons you know.
Come to think of it, I’m pretty sure most leftists have eaten lead crayons.
You can have my lead crayons when you pry them my clammy, retarded fingers.
Everything is a public health issue. That works because when you get all totalitarian, you can say you’re just doing it out of concern for public health.
Real alcoholics don’t need enablers.
*fires up still*
Has anyone considered what this country would look like if it was really racist? Considered what the communist utopia of Cuba is like?
I have been places where a black and white caught speaking civilly to each other in public would both be dragged out into the street and beaten within an inch of their lives.
Hoboken?
Boston.
Hell, *i’d* get beaten up if I went to the wrong part of Boston, and I’m a proud bearer of White Privilege!
Bizarrely the slogan of Postum was “There’s a Reason.”
Drink!
My coffee method is using a pour over coffee filter. Used to have Melitta plastic ones but it wore out and Melitta screwed up their design with an idiotic cutout at the bottom. Finely ground coffee, just above Turkish, and a No 2 paper filter. Water heated to boiled, then taken off to rest while putting the coffee in the filter. For all day drinking at work, I like to add chicory (or a chicory blend), then drink it black.
I’m boring, I just use a plain old BUNN coffee maker to brew mine. All of the coffee I buy is very finely ground and so I typically use 2 scoops, 4 will make it almost thick.
Bunn is a great brand for coffee on demand. I prefer not to use paper filters because it draws the oil out of the coffee and so loses some origin flavor.
The main factor in the flavor of the coffee is not about what filters you use, but the temperature of the water, which should be between 195-205 degrees F. It’s a rather narrow temperature range, and very few machines actually get the water heated to exactly that temperature consistently, which is why some machines make far more bitter coffee than others. The one coffee machine that I know has a properly calibrated heat circulator made from copper is this one.
Mine is supposed to be at a constant 200 F.
Read the review on it on Cook’s Illustrated. Indeed, they said it was one of the more consistent models as far as temperature was concerned.
I use a permanent filter. I actually prefer the paper ones because the permanent one is a pain to clean. But the wife says we’re using it. I got to give her some ‘you’re right, sweety’ on the occasion.
Say what you will of hipsters, and there’s loads to say, but they make one helluva cup of coffee, at least in Bucharest.
Never did like Turkish coffee as it is to sweet. I am of the 0 sweetener variety of coffee drinker, I love the taste of coffee but add extra artificial sweetness to it and it becomes unpleasant to me. I do occasional add a splash of milk, but not always.
My home method is simply I buy fresh roast coffee, grind it in my porlex tall manual grinder and then brew it in a moka pot. Maybe not the best but get the job done and I don’t drink coffee at home more than once a wee. At work we get free espressos, so I drink that, not great but decent and can’t beat the price, although I do pass a hipster coffee shop on my way to work and occasionally stop there for coffee. There are to many double letters for such a short word, stupid english
Coffee fact: as you move north from the equator coffee gets lighter an drew less sweet. The reason…lactose tolerance. Northern Europeans have higher lactose tolerance rates be like cream in their coffee. Arabs have lower rates of lactose tolerance so drink their coffee black and sweet.
Its not only coffee though. Tea in the Muslim world – North Africa Turkey etc, never been to Araby, is very very sweet, cloyingly so imo. It is funny because they make tea from a type of mint, and I find it impressive you can make mint tea and it is not a bit refreshing.
I didn’t really drink coffee until my last year in University which I did in italy and there I got used to drinking Italian style espressos, and so I favored a darker roast. But when third wave single origin fresh roast stuff came to Bucharest i started to favor lighter roasts.
But seriously people if in Bucharest go to Origo, some of the best coffee I have had and this includes many a European capital,.
According to my Bosnian friend, proper Turkish coffee is made with no sugar. Add it later or use rahat-lokum instead.
But then again, Bosnians make a point of being more Turkish than Turks, so…
I hate Turkish delight. Pointless thing.
Oh wow, BBC has an article on the subject!
And it starts with a reminder of why, if you have to be run by Muslim overlords, you may as well choose Turks
Rakija is a Turkish (well, Turk-derived) word for brandy.
Depends in some cultures is an anise flavored liquor like ouzo or pastis, in others it is a fruit brandy like Romanian tuica, palinca or rachiu
In Bosnian context it is a (hopefully fruit, preferably plum, but fraudsters are everywhere) brandy, and the word itself comes from Turkish.
I had a pretty good Serbian Quince brandy called Perun (some sort of slavic Thor or other, I think its pretty sad not more is known of slavic mythology)
God bless Witcher 3, they put Slavic deities as names of the upgrade runes, so more people can learn about Perun, Triglav, Chernobog etc!
I don’t game but got some from Gaimans American Gods and another urban fantasy series called Iron Druid Chronicles in which Perun was a character
As a confession base don the habits of my parents I developed a habit for morning beer on Sundays, and I like a cup of coffee and a beer at the same time and take alternating sips. Most people I know find this very weird, but I like two bitterish drinks, one hot one cold.
In the 1900s wealthy Romanians used to drink champagne for breakfast
But did they boil their coffee with champagne?
I like my coffee black also and use the pour over funnel thingy with unbleached filters.
standard joke: I like my coffee like I like my women, black and bitter
And my standard retort – I like my coffee like I like my women, ground up, bagged, and in the freezer.
I was pleased to have a civil discussion about Confederate statues today with some semi-sane progs. I was anti-removal, they were pro. Here’s the summary:
My basic position was that removing, destroying, or censoring works of art because they offend is a very bad precedent, and is similar to what the Taliban and Chinese Red Guards did. Some people are offended by gay pride parades. Should those be banned? How about Mt Rushmore? That’s a monument on conquered Indian land that celebrates men who waged war on the Indian tribes and said very un-PC things about them. Lookin’ at you, Teddy (“the only good Indian is a dead Indian”*). Hell, the guy who chiseled it was in the KKK!
About the only instance of statue/monument removal I can sort of support is the removal of Stalin/communist ones in Eastern Europe, because those were built for the purpose of humiliating those countries and showing the people who was in charge. On the other hand, the only reason the Stalin monuments came down was because they became an embarrassment to the Soviets. I think the Stalin monuments should have stayed up as a reminder to what a bastard he was.
How about Auschwitz? That’s a symbol of a horrible thing. Should that stay up? If so, why? They said that’s different because it’s not there to celebrate Nazis.
So here were the counterarguments:
The Confederates were traitors and losers. They don’t deserve monuments. (I pointed out that Washington was also a traitor, but was met with “that’s different!”)
The monuments celebrate white supremacy/slavery.
Public opinion has changed and those monuments are now unacceptable.
Monuments to Washington are different because slavery/racism was normal when Washington was alive.
Put them in museums.
The people who like them are racists. They need to be suppressed.
*what he actually said: “‘I don’t go so far as to think that the only good Indians are dead Indians, but I believe nine out of ten are, and I shouldn’t like to inquire too closely into the case of the tenth.”
I also mentioned that the Confederate monuments were basically a participation trophy to take the sting out of their defeat so the country could heal. Letting them have their flags and statues is small price to pay to avert more violence.
Sometimes it’s best to let the Wookie win.
this. people don’t understand the context of why they were built in the first place, which was in the early 20th century as thousands of Civil War veterans were all dying off. The country basically said, “we’re better off now, and all of you should be honored”.
the entire purpose of monuments is to teach you about history. these people simply want to project their own fantasies onto these symbols and claim “that’s what they mean”
Meh in general I am not a big fan of statues of leaders and famous people
The only argument I can see about tearing down the Confederate memorial statues is intent. They’re not contemporaneous memorials. Most of them were put up in either the 1920s (height of the KKK) or during Jim Crow. If you wanted to make a sane argument, it would be that the statues weren’t put up to celebrate history (and they probably weren’t). I’m still not in favor of tearing them down.
If I’m going to be sympathetic to any of their arguments, it’s the “put them in museums” one, but even that’s fallen into controversy (like a couple of years ago when confederate flags were removed from a civil war battlefield memorial)
There’s a statute of Che Guevara in New York City. There’s a statue of Vladimir Lenin in Seattle. Those men represent an ideology that killed and enslaved far more people than the American slave trade could have if it lasted another 500 years. Wonder what the antifa (or police) response would be if someone went to tear those statues down in the middle of the night.
“If the missiles had remained (in Cuba),We would have used them against the very heart of the U.S., including New York City. The victory of Socialism is well worth millions of atomic victims.”
– Ernesto ‘Che” Guevara, November 1962.
I had no idea there was a Che statue in New York. The man openly admitted he would have nuked NYC given the chance.
Shouldn’t have spoken off the cuff. There was one, but apparently it was part of a temporary display and was taken down in like 2009.
But there was one, so…
Just remember… their goal is to kick up a fuss and get their opponents to fight them on an issue where the opponents are at a disadvantage. They want to paint their opponents as racists.
Let the statues go – they are to us what the Aleutian Islands were to the U.S. in World War II.
No, that’s appeasement and capitulation, not a strategic retreat. All you’re doing is emboldening them and granting them more power, not to mention validating the violent actions of antifa. They are always going to paint their opponents as racists, and their Red Guard LARP is not going to stop because you give in.
I’m thinking a guerilla artist should install that quote at the Guevara statue in New York. A nice little bronze plaque to let the people of New York know what he thought of them.
Which is a purely subjective viewpoint.
Which is a valid point. I’m not a fan of public monuments in general because the state loves nothing more than to celebrate itself. If the populace votes to remove a public monument because it is in bad taste, then so be it. It took a majority to put it up, let a majority take it down. However, that is not what is happening. A vocal minority is hijacking the process and inflaming tensions in the process.
Now we’re getting to the truth.
England outlawed slavery before the United States did, therefore all statues commemorating the defeat of England by the US must be torn down. I’ve double checked my Progressive math on this, and it looks solid.
I think Eddie and Gilmore nailed it already. This monument nonsense isnt about the monuments. It is about stirring the shit. It is what pinko agitators do.
Every man who ever got a statue of himself was one sumbitch or another.
If public opinion has changed, someone here already had the solution: hold referendums in those communities as to whether the statues should be kept up. If the vote is to get rid of them, sell them to the Sons of Confederate Veterans.
A damn fine article. Great job.
I agree. My only quibble is that he should have pointed out that in New York they invented the practice of adding cream to a cup of coffee, or, as it is known in New Jersey, a “coffee with cream”.
These New Yorkers and their weird food habits. Rolls with butter? Coffee with cream? Who does that?
(Cream should go nowhere near coffee though, because it ruins it)
Thank you. This is the first time I’ve written for fun and I really enjoyed the process.
Great article. And to it, I will add this bit about coffee and its frequent absence in the USSR:
The New York Times reported:
***
Soviet Coffee Shortage
Published: November 19, 1991
MOSCOW, Nov. 18— Because of a severe shortage of hard currency, the Soviet Union plans no coffee imports for 1992. The Tass press agency said today that the Soviet Union had signed no contracts for coffee imports for 1992 and Soviet coffee-processing plants might shut down because of a lack of deliveries for the rest of 1991. It said the Soviet Union had received only 50,000 metric tons of the 80,000 tons contracted from India, Vietnam and Laos this year.
***
I can’t help but think of all the idiot commies hanging out in coffee shops. Hey morons: your guys couldn’t even get this right. Haven’t you seen Moscow on the Hudson?
“Coffee! Coffee! Coffee!”
It takes a special combination of ignorance, evil and stupidity to be a pinko.
This article has some fun tibdits:
https://www.perfectdailygrind.com/2015/10/cold-war-coffeenomics-combating-communism-with-coffee/
***
Did the Soviets Drink Coffee?
So what about the Russians in all of this? Didn’t they drink coffee too?
There’s no doubt that behind the Iron Curtain there was a taste for coffee. In various ex-Eastern bloc countries, there’s evidence that coffee substitutes (think chicory or even rye) were consumed during shortages. In Romania, a substance called nechezol was often drunk in place of real coffee. The name comes from “to neigh” in Romanian… because the ingredients were more commonly associated with horse food! It was a mixture of one quarter coffee, barley, oats, chickpeas (!) and chestnuts.
Economic data suggests that Soviet coffee consumption really took off in the 1980s. At this time, the Soviet Union’s principal suppliers of coffee were Brazil, Vietnam, Cuba, and India, with the USSR accounting for over 36% of the Indian coffee market. Cuba, after the revolution in 1959 and ensuing nationalisation, experienced a terrible decline of its coffee industry. However, it experienced a resurgence in the ‘70s and ‘80s, thanks to increasing demand from the Soviet Union. And Brazil, via companies such as Cacique and Iguacu, became major suppliers of instant coffee to the USSR in the 1980’s.
***
“The Cuban coffee ostensibly collapsed due to economic mismanagement, but was undoubtedly affected by losing access to the US market. ”
So hard for some people to admit that communism doesn’t work.
That damn bad luck!
Fun fact: a business here tried to bring back nechezol to profit on the nostalgia factor
who wants early links?
Baltimore mayor says she wanted to remove Confederate statues ‘quickly and quietly’
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/08/16/baltimore-takes-down-confederate-statues.html
***
Baltimore’s mayor said she wanted to move “quickly and quietly” after officials approved a plan to remove four Confederate statues Monday night, a decision that came amid a national furor over a violent white nationalist gathering in Virginia organized to protest the removal of a Confederate statue there.
Mayor Catherine Pugh told reporters Wednesday morning she felt the best way to remove the monuments, in an effort to keep the community safe, was to do the work overnight.
“I though there’s enough grandstanding, enough speeches being made [on the top], let’s get it done,” she said. “I spoke with the city council on Monday and said, ‘With the climate in this nation, I think it’s very important that we move quickly and quietly’…and that’s what I did.”
Pugh, who is African-American, added: “I wanted them out of this city.”
The Baltimore City Council approved the plan Monday night to remove four Confederate statues from the city’s public spaces – just two days after the deadly white supremacist rally in Charlottesville, Va. on Saturday.
Pugh reiterated several times that the city’s plan had been in the works since June, and earlier said the quick overnight action was designed to avoid violent conflicts like what Charlottesville experienced.
“I think any city that has confederate statue has concerns about violence happening in the city,” she said, adding it was long overdue.
***
TDS claims another life:
Rosie O’Donnell: You’re a ‘Nazi’ if you work with ‘Adolf Trump’
http://www.foxnews.com/entertainment/2017/08/16/rosie-odonnell-youre-nazi-if-work-with-adolf-trump.html?
***
By Sasha Savitsky
Published August 16, 2017
Fox News
Now Playing
Rosie O’Donnell: If you work with Trump you’re a ‘Nazi’
Close
If you “stand” with President Trump then you’re a Nazi, according to Rosie O’Donnell.
The comedian took her frustrations to Twitter saying anyone who “stands” or “works” with “Adolf Trump” is a Nazi.
“if u stand next 2 and work with adolf trump – yes u f–king are a nazi,” O’Donnell tweeted Tuesday.
The 55-year-old shared several messages on her Twitter account in response to Trump’s press conference during which he criticized the media’s coverage of Saturday’s deadly attack at a political protest in Charlottesville, Virginia.
O’Donnell tweeted, “republicans – this is on you – every single one of you who stand by this madman – do something – denounce him – file articles of impeachment.”
***
O’Donnell’s the one who called for martial law and a military dictatorship after Trump won, so I think her TDS has been around for awhile.
Ocean Rosies. Classic.
“if u stand next 2 and work with adolf trump – yes u f–king are a nazi,” O’Donnell tweeted Tuesday.
And the fact that she’s posting that on Twitter, for all the world to see, proves conclusively that only one of two scenarios is possible. She either doesn’t believe a word of what she’s saying and knows accusing Donald Trump of being a Nazi is the absolute safest thing she can do without the fear of an iota of retribution from Trump or she believes Donald Trump is a Nazi and is either stupid or suicidal.
Guess the state this happened in: transgender stripper, fearing cannibalism, stabs man to death and runs away naked
http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/08/16/stripper-fatally-stabbed-partner-in-eyes-with-pen-police-say.html
The links thread is up and needs some links
Never mind it’s gone
Sometimes I have to clean up behind Brett when he forgets his adult diaper.
delete my first, more like.
Very interesting piece. I had no idea coffee was ever the subject of prohibition. The stuff on here, written by amateurs in their spare time, really is better than the stuff on Reason.
100%
Yes. No small thanks to you John. I was late reading your article so I didn’t get to compliment you.
Write more.
Thanks man. There are two more in the pike. One which, about white guilt and class, I think is pretty good. I really do.
Groovy. Looking forward to it!
Also looking forward to it.
I appreciate the compliment. I would like to read more of your stuff and other commenters’ work. It’s a really diverse group and I like to learn about other people’s passions.
The Pope also believed that coffee was less harmful than alcohol and thus blessed the bean.
In no small part, he was right. What a lot of us in the modern era fail to realize is that potable water was at a relative premium. Even less than a century ago, you’d find immigrants shocked that you might ask for a glass of water with dinner (“That’s for washing your hands!”). To get around it, most people drank alcoholic beverages as a substitute. The alcohol and boiling would do a lot to increase drinkability. Coffee, because of the boiling, did a lot of the same thing. Going from having a permanent minor buzz from alcohol to coffee did wonders for people’s productivity and clarity.
Also, for what it’s worth, I come from a family of extremely heavy coffee drinkers. I’m the youngest and lived with my parents alone for a few years after my siblings had left the house. On a Saturday or Sunday morning we would go through three pots of coffee.