I gave up coffee for about 5 months and I have since gone back to the coffee drinking, caffeinated mad scientist I was before I gave it up. I use to make a pot each morning but it seemed overkill since I only have one 16 ounce chalice of coffee in the morning. Yes, I call it a chalice. Although you cannot see it from this picture, the mug chalice has different shades of brown and the opposite side has lines going top to bottom. It’s fancy-like! 🙂
You probably already knew I gave up caffeine and know of the withdrawal I went through. What I have not mentioned is that I am addicted to coffee again! The first two weeks, I probably had a cup every other day. Each time I had a cup, I could feel the effects of caffeine jolting up my nerves. I have since ratcheted up my intake to at the very least, a chalice a day.
..and it’s not just the act of drinking it. It is the act of making it. I mentioned the overkill of making a full pot so two years I purchased a Keurig. After a few weeks of making K Cups, I felt sad for the environmental impact of my habit and the fact that I really could not make a good cup of coffee. I purchased a re-usable K cup and preceded to experiment.
The biggest thing about coffee is the water. I have used distilled and reverse osmosis (RO) water. The water in Indiana is hard, it has a great deal of iron in it and atleast to my taste buds, it makes the coffee look slightly burned. I don’t want “Extra” in my coffee, so I wanted to start out with clean and clear water. I grind my coffee fresh each morning! I don’t think it matters much what brand coffee but today I made “Cafe Fair Coffee- Morning Blend”. Again, these are beans and I use a grinder to grind the beans. I usually grind for about 40 seconds. I grind for 20 seconds, tap the grinder to get the smaller bits to the top and then grind another 20 seconds. I fill the K Cup and then tap the grinds down a bit, I don’t compress them because I want the water to seep down through all the grinds.
The reusable K cup allows some finer grinds to get through and I hate finding coffee grinds at the bottom of my cup. My coffee has to be like Maxwell House… Good To The Last Drop!
I place a #2 filter in my old coffee makers plastic filter to catch those extra grinds. My Keurig has three settings: Small, Medium and Large. Large only fills my mug about 3/4 of the way but running two small cycles, gets it close enough to the top. Then it’s just a dash of sugar and milk. I pour the milk slowly until it gets about a 1/4 inch from the top, since the water is nearly pure, I can see the milk starting to cloud from the bottom up.
Aah… That’s good coffee.
Since I quit drinking coffee and now started this habit up, I can see the effects of caffeine on my nerves as I mentioned above. Equally, I can see my body craving more once a few hours have passed after my one and only 16 ounce chalice. For the first time in 10 years, I have resorted to drinking a second glass! In fact, I had to brew a chalice just to write this blog… I mean, I needed to take a picture of that beautiful coffee coming from the heavens with the milky white clouds.. right?!?!
It’s okay everyone, this is the person I am, nutty, happy go lucky. Strange but not weird 🙂 or… maybe I’ve just had too much coffee today!
That’s the Story4Today!
Story4today 
Since I quit drinking alcohol my already high coffee intake has gone through the roof. I’m currently in the throes of cutting down and even the slightest reduction is giving me a headache like a smack round the head with a baseball bat 😦 I’m aiming to get it down to one small cafetiere in the morning as too much is I think messing with existing my thyroid/adrenal health issues. I’m also wondering if I need to fully quit, that it’s an all or nothing thing like booze… yikes! Be well 🙂
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I remember those headaches, by 3pm I felt extremely tired. I think when I quit coffee, I went to 3/4 of a cup, half a cup, 1/4 cup, full cup decaf, 3/4 cup decaf, half cup decaf and I still had the headache and tiredness. After about 4 days it cleared up but I continued to have cravings for coffee all the time. Looking back, it wasn’t too bad.
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Yep, I have the tiredness too. I’ve slept most of the last two days, when the headache has let me. It’ll pass though… I’ll live! 🙂 Maybe I’ll try adding in some decaf too, thanks for the tip.
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I’ll be slowly quitting the caffeine again too. Strange how jittery I am starting it back up after a few months of stopping.
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