The Search for the Perfect Cup of Coffee

My husband Tom has been on a quest for the perfect cup of coffee since we got married, and I’m not entirely sure why. When we met he was drinking instant coffee from a dirty mug with powered creamer. When we would visit his family at their family business he’d drink day old coffee from the coffee machine in their garage. “It’s not any good unless your tongue goes numb!” he’d say. We got one of those Mr. Coffee automatic drip coffee makers as a wedding gift, which provided me with my one cup in the morning and filled his thermos for the rest of the day. Then somewhere along the way he said “This coffee doesn’t taste very good.” Suddenly we were on the hunt for a different type of coffee maker because his friend, who is a chef, said that the water has to be brought up to a certain temperature in order to properly brew and that the only way to do that is with an old fashioned percolator. So we got a percolator. It took a little longer in the morning but I got my one cup and he put the rest in the thermos and took it to work. About 10 years ago he decided he was drinking too much coffee and it was getting to him. We talked to some friends who had a “Toddy” cold brew system. It was a little labor-intensive but you ended up with coffee that was supposedly more smooth with less caffeine (unless you drank the concentrate without diluting it). We did that for a while until Tom gave up coffee altogether. I continued on with that system for my one cup of coffee (until it got to be a chore for just me) then a I tried series of other quick ways to make just one cup in the morning until the invention of Keurig, which only brews one cup at a time. The Keurig was perfect because I was the only one who drank coffee. Then Tom decided he missed it and was ready to come back. Around that time Sammy and Robby started drinking coffee so my little one-cupper wasn’t enough and we switched to a better model that kept the water hot. But Tom wasn’t happy. “It doesn’t get the water to the right temperature. The coffee from the gas station tastes better than this does!”

“Then get your coffee from the gas station because it tastes fine to me.” Nevertheless, we found ourselves in Bed Bath & Beyond, replacing my Keurig with a Bunn automatic drip coffee maker. So we’ve come just about full circle.  An the funny thing is, it has all, always tasted the same to me. Will Tom ever get his perfect cup of coffee? I’ll let you know when his tongue goes numb.