The taste of coffee

I recently recov- ered from my second annual bout of Covid. In both cases I suffered minimal symptoms, and was able to use the time of isolation to catch up on some office work, and do a little reading. It was not exactly a vacation, but it was a restful – if sniffling – time out.

However, there were two long term effects this time. The first involves my memory. I can’t always remember the name of the person I’m talking to.

But the second is more serious. Suddenly, coffee began to taste funny. And the two symptoms intersected the other morning when I forgot to drink coffee, funny taste or no, and I ended up with a terrible caffeine-deprived headache, which didn’t go away until I hastily downed a couple of cups from a quickly-brewed pot.

Coffee makes it possible for me to face the day. When I was growing up there was one unbreakable rule – don’t bug mom until she’s had her morning coffee. Whatever it was we thought was so important could wait until she slowly finished her cup of happiness, peace, and joy.

Because of that I’ve always associated coffee with relaxing, thinking, praying, and breathing. And not biting anyone’s head off.

As for taste, that’s another matter. Coffee is bitter. If it’s good coffee it should so strong you have to make a face before you swallow. And not a good face. More of a scrunchy pad of iron wool kind of face.

I know when they talk about the flavor of coffee, they use language like a wine snob. Full-bodied. Rich. Earthy. With notes of chocolate. Stuff like that. But in my experience good coffee is strong coffee, and strong coffee is bitter.

And why do we put up with the flavor of coffee?

Because coffee is not about the flavor. It’s a caffeine-delivery system. It’s a drug. A legal drug with no social or legal consequences.

Anyway, during my last bout of Covid the taste of coffee was not just bitter – it was awful. Harsh, metallic, and scouring.

But it’s become obvious that my coffee taste buds, and only my coffee taste buds, were affected. I didn’t lose my sense of taste or smell like other folks. Instead, coffee tasted like fly paper. Or maybe flies. I’m wasn’t just grimacing. My eyeballs were bugging out.

So temporarily I took up drinking hot tea with honey. Honey helps the coughing, and it’s the honey I took off the beehives last October. Raw honey, unprocessed, unpasteurized, the Real Deal.

Once my cough started to fade away, I went back to coffee, and that’s when I noticed it still tasted awful.

The solution? Drink coffee anyway. I’m not drinking it for my health. I’m drinking coffee so I don’t rob a bank, steal cookies off the store’s shelf, or make a pest of myself on Facebook. I’m drinking coffee so all the things I’m thinking about people stay inside my head instead of actually getting spoken. I’m drinking coffee because people don’t need to find out what a grouch I really am.

Someday my sense of taste when it comes to coffee will come back. I’ll know it right away because I’ll take a gulp of coffee, make a face, shake my head, shrug my shoulders, and then hunch over and shudder all over because the coffee I make is strong, strong, strong. My wife Jennie will look over in my direction with a look of alarm and say, “Are you okay?”

And I’ll just smile.