During my full-time teaching days, I always enjoyed a cup of coffee. I could drink actual coffee back then. The stuff that needs a plunger so that you can make it properly.
When I left Noorderland, the the coffee drinking stopped. I figured it would resume once I found work again. Didn’t know that it would be another four years before I would have another cup of filter coffee.
And so there I was at Fusion Boutique Hotel enjoying a good cup of filter coffee. I thought I enjoyed it. My gut on the other end found it quite repulsive and did what guts do to get rid of madness. It was in those moments on the loo in this gorgeously decorated bathroom that I realised: I like coffee, but it doesn’t like me any longer.
I tried decaf filter coffee and a handful of other mitigations. None of them worked. I thought the caffeine was the problem. Thishin pointed that if caffeine was the problem, I would not be able to stomach other caffeinated drinks.
Then one day it occurred to me. Instead of cooking rooibos tea on the stove, why not try cooking the coffee. It worked like a charm. I can enjoy the wonderful pick-me-up that is coffee again. And man oh man did I miss this drink that may well have inspired the industrial revolution itself.