"if you choose to drink decaf, you deserve bad coffee"
Talking to a long 'lost' friend this afternoon, E, she clarified some of my misguided conceptions about coffee. She was lost because E spent a good deal of several months in the snow-covered Canada last year and thus off of my friendar (friend radar). She worked as a travelling coffee barrista much like a Gypsy fortune teller. One can go to a Gypsy to have their fortune told, but if you cross with one, you get cursed with bad Gypsy ju-ju. If you cross with her, you get served with black sludge, literally.
It started with questions about my sanity and my attempts to cover-up the fact that I am actually an emotionally damaged emo kid. But my misconception was that a cup of latte is 50% milk and 50% coffee, and that it shouldn't be foamy like a cappuccino wannabe. But then I found out that there are rarely that much coffee in an actual cup of coffee. You get 2 shots of espresso usually, so around 60mL.
Cappuccino is suppose to be 50/50, so it seems stronger.
Latte has a lot more milk but less foam.
Flat white has only a thin top layer of foam to seal it but rest is milk.
Which brings the question of, if most of my coffee is milk, what different does coffee bean make? Referring to people being fussy about their coffee beans. It doesn't really, unless you drink black coffee and black sludge. That's where fresh press coffee differs from a month-old coffee bean (it sounds more like a description for babies, "can you use some month-old baby beans in my coffee please?").
"What's sludge?" I asked. "Brewed coffee that sits on the burner for too long."
"Oh," I paused "and you can sell that?" She grinned electronically with mathematical symbols, "only when I'm feeling bitchy. Usually to decaf drinkers. If you choose to drink decaf, you deserve bad coffee." She went on to explain how most decaf drinkers act real douchenozzle like.
The word sludge though, reminded me of a case I heard about on the psych ward. The logic is that a man wanted to commit suicide. He heard that if there are bacteria in the blood, it can cause septicaemia which could lead to multi-organ failure and death. He also learned from school that there are bacteria in poo. You put the two together, that is what he did. He injected poo into his blood stream, unfortunately his plan didn't succeed.
Initially it was puzzling for the treating doctor as to why they found E. coli in the blood, and then some curious intern found the 'concoction' in his drawer. Subsequently it was learned that he is usually discharged for this malingering behaviour, so he travels across country, gets admitted to hospitals that his fame has not reached.
When they rang up a hospital inter-state for previous medical record, they said "oh! you guys found the poo-pusher!?"
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