By Nick Reiher

I like coffee.

Not as much as I did in the ‘80s. At that time, I was a snob, buying mostly fresh beans, along with collecting some really cool hand grinders.

I would delicately pour the dark brown beans into the top of the grinder, then enjoy the sublime aroma as I wound the handle around and around until the box below was full of fresh grounds ready for whatever method I would use to brew.

“Where’s your monkey,” my Mom would ask as she saw me grinding away. I would tell her no Kenya AA for her. And she would say Folgers was good enough.

Indeed, it is now, and much cheaper, even with the cost of coffee rising. Now, I’ll put three large scoops of the aromatic grounds from the red plastic container into a paper filter that fits into my Ninja coffee maker, and set the timer for just before my son leaves for work.

I’ll have a cup or two during the day, maybe more on a colder day. But it appears that will be a while coming.

Coffee was always part of my life, whether I drank it or not. My parents, like many of that generation, would have it every morning and sometimes after dinner with dessert.

I tried it once when I was a tad, but the bitterness kept me away. Until I discovered lacing it with a lot of milk and spoonfuls of sugar made that medicine go down. My glucose level went up, but … Anyway, let’s put a pin in that formula for a bit.

When I started college, preferring to study from 10 p.m. until about 1 a.m., I realized I needed some liquid encouragement. Coffee fit the bill.

About the same time, I started working switchboard at a Chicago hospital, and I needed coffee, bad as it was, to get me through to 7 a.m.

That was the beginning of my coffee connoisseurship.

Did you know my man Beethoven was a coffee fiend? So particular (go figure) that each morning he would grind exactly 60 beans for his coffee. (Bet his Mom didn’t ask about HIS monkey!)

Beethoven loved his coffee and chocolate. There is a portrait of him where his eyes look as though the scarfed a whole bunch of both.

I’ll buy coffee at the drive-through with my McDonald’s breakfast, mostly when we’re traveling. I used to be hooked on Dunkin’s, convinced they put something in there to draw me in repeatedly.

Which brings me to my point, finally. There are a lot of coffee shops around; they are spaced evenly between the spate of taquerias (Don’t call me. I love Mexican food. I eat in any language. But, geez!)

There’s a fairly new one on Jefferson Street in Joliet where there always seems to be a line. You’d think it was a Portillos, or, for those back in the ‘hood, a Johnnie’s Beef.

The lines at that drive-through are a lot shorter than when they first opened, stretching all the way down the side street for a block or two.

On Facebook, some commenters said, ah, you ain’t had nuthin’. Wait ‘til XXXX opens in Plainfield.

So, I looked at the online menus of both (something I love to do, even if I probably never will visit the place, like Delmonico’s in New York.)

There was no “coffee.” Like coffee coffee. The kind Gibbs on NCIS likes. He likes coffee in his coffee.

Instead, there were a couple dozen variations of the mixture I used to make when I was growing up: more milk and sugar than coffee. And flavorings like lavender.

Lavender! OK, in tea, but coffee?

But this stuff isn’t really coffee, is it? At least Starbuck’s offers some legitimate coffee with it’s many flavorful mixtures.

My daughter likes these. She doesn’t like coffee.

My wife doesn’t like coffee. When my Dad heard that before we were married, he asked, I think tongue in cheek, “are you sure you want to marry her?”

When Tammy woke up one of the first days after we were married, she asked, “What’s that horrible smell?”

Thankfully, she was talking about the coffee brewing.

I dunno. It all makes me wonder: Where the hell is my monkey?

And my coffee.

 

Nick Reiher is editor of Farmers Weekly Review.