Hi. It’s me. OB. The Middle Aged Wit Guy. And if there’s one thing I’ve learned over the years, it’s to KISS things. To Keep It Simple, Stupid. To simplify the little things because at this age, I’m running out of time.

I recently KISSED my greatest love. Coffee.

I love coffee like a fat kid loves cake. And believe me, fat kids LOVE cake. I have a fat kid in my neighborhood. His name is Hadley. Yeah. Hadley. I live in a nice neighborhood where some parents give their kids WASP-ish names from a 1960s Yale frat house. Where names like Adlai, Spiro, and Whitney dodged the draft. Except these kids in my neighborhood, along with getting faggy names (yeah, I said faggy) get Apple watches and nannies and are spoon-fed the good stuff and protected from the bad stuff and the closest they’ll ever get to any Ivy League is poison ivy they’ll tramp through on a dude-ranch vacation in Montana.

Where was I? Oh yeah. Coffee.

Back when I was a peacock (young man with my chest out, spreading my feathers), I had the time, budget, and vanity to explore coffee. I started with a French press. Let everyone know it, too.

I…HAVE…A…FRENCH….PRESS. Are you impressed?

Then, I moved on to buying whole beans and grinding them myself. I would make it a point every now and then, when at the grocery store, to bring a bag of ground beans to the lady at the register and when she would scan it, I would fake huffiness so everyone in line would hear me…

SORRY. I MEANT TO BUY WHOLE BEANS. I USUALLY GRIND MY OWN. Are you impressed?

Then, when I realized there was a store near me in the Linden Hills neighborhood of Minneapolis that imported beans from all over the world and roasted them in the window of their 100-year-old roaster, I damned the grocery chains and started spending $20 / lb on a Kenyan blend that was grown in cheetah spit and blessed by a shaman.

Still not impressed?

Then, I bought a pour-over carafe set. This included a snooty stainless steel kettle with a surgically thin snout, a stack of (jeezus) organic paper filters, and an hour-glass shaped pitcher with a wooden handle. I would grind my beans and plop them gently into a filter at the top of the carafe, heat my water to precisely 193° Fahrenheit and over the next ten minutes, pour my water in concentric circles into the cheetah spit & shaman blend for several minutes until the carafe filled with coffee fit for the gods.

It was part ritual. Part perfection. Total douche.

Fatefully, and thankfully, this all came to end in a matter of seconds. I was a new dad, exhausted, made a miscalculation and ran out of beans, and as my withdrawal symptoms turned into the shakes, I knocked the carafe off the kitchen countertop and watched it break on the floor. 10 years and $1000s invested in my coffee evolution shattered!

Meh.

New dads don’t have time for 10 minute coffee rituals. And kids are ‘spensive.

After not much thought at all, it occurred to me that my fancy hand-held 10 minute long pour-over routine could be automatically achieved with a certain $39 Hamilton Beach coffee maker from Amazon. And, unlike the carafe, the Hamilton Beach would hold the heat with its $0.10 warming plate.

As for the beans, my budget eventually migrated to my kids’ college fund. For a long while I returned to the grocery store to buy whole beans from regional coffee roasters. Then, accidently (truly an accident) I bought a bag of ground beans.

Guess what? The ground beans that I scoffed at for years tasted just as good as the whole beans that I ground myself. Less expensive. Saves time.

But even now that pre-ground regional brew has become expensive with inflation the way it is. The last bag I bought was $9.99/lb.

So last week, on a whim, I bought a can of vacuum-sealed Folgers!

That’s right. Folgers.

And guess what? It is delicious! Delectable! 

I thought I was legit crazy. Like maybe my taste buds had died. Too many mouthfuls of bourbon over the years killed my tongue. But when I am not writing this blog, I run a fairly successful little health care business and we take our cues from data.

America is a country of coffee drinkers.

Folgers’s revenue is $2B annually. Millions of Americans drink it daily.

Are they all wrong? Are they drinking crap coffee?

Nope. I was wrong. Me. OB. Wrong! Wrong! Wrong!

That’s another great thing about aging. Admitting when I am wrong.

Honestly, buying expensive coffee is for the peacocks.

This coffee snob’s routine has been KISSED.

Let middle age continue!

~OB

PS- Click Folgers if you want to try this magic. Click Dope Ass Coffee Maker if you need one. Put them both in your Amazon basket for the same price as a couple of pounds of the cheetah spit and shaman blend. Enjoy!