Bad Coffee

A few days ago, I was caught on all fours with my head stuck into a rhododendron. My apartment managers, on their way out to some adventure or another, had the good sense to ask me what the heck I was doing. Panicked, I took my head out of the bush and looked at the incriminating scoop in my left hand, and a partially emptied jar of coffee grounds in my right.

"Fertilizing?" I asked. I suddenly felt like I had admitted to being up to no good.

"Are you going to have enough to do the azaleas out back?"

Coffee experts will claim that I drink bad coffee on a regular basis. I don't drink enough coffee to use the beans within a few days of the roasting process. I don't own a coffee grinder, so I do one mass grind and I let the grinds get nice and stale before I use them all. And, even though I have two oft touted apparatus for brewing coffee, I most frequently use those dastardly paper filters. One of my coffee slinging compadres told me that I might as well wake up and make myself a steamy mug of shit soup because I probably couldn't taste the difference. Ah, touché, my barista buddy; I'm sure you can really pick up every nuance of flavor while chain smoking those American Spirits.

A few weeks ago, I was given a tub full of coffee at a dinner party. My host had spent the day cleaning out her pantry, and being that I've recently become everyone's favorite charity case, I was gifted with the coffee along with two cans of clam chowder and a box of instant pudding. I was quite pleased, because I was getting down to the last few cups of coffee in my stash of beans.

When I tried the coffee, I was not impressed. In fact, the nicest way I can think of to describe this coffee is an understated, "Gross." Still, I thought I'd persist with drinking this coffee, glowering into each cup. I couldn't doctor this coffee in any sort of way that improved its taste. I resigned myself to grimace and bear it.

I'm not one to keep my mouth shut if I don't like something. While this is not one of my more laudable qualities, it has often served my sense of self-preservation. I let it slip that I'd been drinking coffee with a bad case of nasty to several people. The response was unanimous: "Get rid of it!"

I couldn't justify just tossing the coffee, but I felt a little better about buying a new stash if I could use the old gunk to fertilize my building's plant life. I went to the store, picked out some new beans. Today I brewed my first cup, and it's not much better. While I'm not reacting to it with a resounding, "YUCK!" like the previous batch, I'm still wondering how long I'll be able to tolerate the over-abundance of green top notes. To make matters worse, I've got a stomach ache. I think I know the culprit.