Decaf
March 12th, 2008I just got out of a terrible talk. The talk was good. Well, maybe at least — I wouldn’t really know. I fell asleep. Partly that’s a quirk of my metabolism, partly that’s because it was over my head, and partly because someone put the wrong coffee in the carafe.
The rules are simple:
- Go ahead and drink decaf. Don’t let anybody give you crap for it. You’re an adult and, like all adult decisions, only you are qualified to decide.
- Don’t tell me it tastes the same. It doesn’t.
- Don’t serve me decaf without warning me. Yes, I do drink the stuff from time to time (like when I’m cold and want something warm, but rule #2 isn’t idle talk. If you do try to pass decaf off as the real thing, I might write snarky things in my blog about the etiquette of serving decaf. You don’t want that.
I would conjecture that people who drink decaf interchangeably with regular coffee are either used to tasting cream and sugar, and really can’t tell the difference, or are trying to nurse themselves out of a massive caffeine dependency, and can tell the difference but need to lie to themselves about it.
The latter group I can respect somewhat; there were a few times in college when I really just needed to take a coffee hiatus. I’ll admit that — to me — decaffeinated coffee is like non-alcoholic wine: it just doesn’t taste right. I’d rather drink water. (Speaking of which, if you’ve ever hypothetically tried to get female friends drunk on non-alcoholic wine as a psychology experiment, you know that it won’t work — they’ll notice straightaway.)
My opinions on the cream-and-sugar crowd are well-documented. It doesn’t make you a bad person, any more than drinking PBR makes you a bad person, but taking your coffee that way indicates that you have a different set of goals for your coffee experience than I do. It’s cool; I’m a beverage pluralist (more or less), just stay the heck away from my coffee.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I need to go get some real coffee into my system so that I can keep my eyes open.
March 12th, 2008 at 2:25 pm
I’ve never had decaf before… does it really taste different? i always thought it was decaf through genetic manipulation, but wiki tells me i’m so very wrong.
p.s. never tried that psychology experiment, but if i do know that something has a high alcohol content, i do feel more inebriated even if i can normally drink that much anyways.
and ok, drinking PBR… makes you a bad person.
March 12th, 2008 at 3:50 pm
The taste difference is really conspicuous in my opinion. Caffeine is bitter enough to taste. (”Bitter” isn’t exactly the right word, because it’s kind of sweet too.)
The taste difference between wine and nonalcoholic wine is really conspicuous too, for about the same reason: there’s definitely enough alcohol in wine to taste, and you definitely notice the absence.
Drinking PBR means that you’re more interested in getting inebriated than you are in experiencing a lot of flavors/spending a lot of money on yourway to getting inebriated. Which is pretty much the same as drinking your coffee with sugar (cream has its place as I’ve mentioned), just replace the depressant with a stimulant.
So if drinking PBR makes you a bad person (I make no attempt to answer that), then I think that so does drinking your coffee with sugar.