In the tradition of every techie ever, I drink coffee daily. My average is about three cups a day. It used to be two cups, but then I went ahead and had a kid. So now it’s three to four cups a day.

I do not drink my coffee black. I find that my taste buds haven’t been ruined enough to enjoy black coffee. Milk and sugar is standard, though I experiment with things like caramel syrup, taro root powder, chaga mushroom powder, etc.

I drink essentially three types of coffee at home –

1. I own a Breville Nespresso Creatista machine and that’s my primary method of coffee intake. It takes Nespresso OriginalLine pods and spits out a coffee and steams the milk. Nespresso-compatible pods come with a rating system which seems out of 10, but the darker roast coffees are often 11 or 12. The rating system is supposed to be somewhat standardized, but I’ve noticed that there’s a lot of variance. It seems that vendors, specially fly-by-night vendors on Amazon, just do whatever suits them. I’m ok with that. I’m not looking for a consistent coffee experience. If I wanted more caffeine, I’ll just make another coffee. If I want less kick, I just add more milk and enjoy the coffee longer.
2. I also use an IKEA Moka pot with this awesome South Indian coffee powder my friends gifted me. It has 40% chicory and that takes the taste in a whole different direction. I love that too! The Moka pot adds it’s own flavor profile. I don’t fill it up fully and the resulting coffee is somehow more bitter than if the pot were full. I love the darkness of the coffee on days when I want a real good jolt, and on days when I can’t run the machine as my kid’s sleeping.
3. Lastly, I also enjoy Nestle Instant coffee, a holdover from my youth in India. This bottle is only available in Indian stores, though I’m sure grocery stores in the US carry their own type of instant coffee. The process is simple – heat up some milk, toss in some sugar, toss in some coffee powder, and mix! A variation of this is to first milk sugar and coffee powder with hot water and whip it into a fine lather. Adding milk to that reveals a whole new world of joy.

While I may talk about numbers 2 and 3 at some later point, I’m going to focus mostly on number 1 for the foreseeable future in this series. I love buying coffee pods from different vendors on Amazon and sourcing them from my local grocery store. I’ve had the machine for a while, so I’ve actually drank a lot of variety, but I’m going to start fresh, and review each pod as I’m done with a box of it.

These will not be rigorous reviews. I’m not going for critique. Rather, it’s an exploration of my own ideas around coffee. Plus, I’ve been aching to do a “series” on my blog and coffee being such a large part of our lives, it seems fitting to talk about it.

Let me know your thoughts on this in the comments section. I love to talk about coffee.