While not an exclusive domain coffee and English teachers are as bound together as cheese and mice, doughnuts and cops, and to be blunt, like drugs to addicts.

I only recently became a member of the biggest druggie club in the world.  I am fairly sure when meeting someone new that I most likely share this in common: an addiction to caffeine and its delivery system coffee.

It is by acclamation the most consumed legal drug in the world, one of the top ten most heavily traded agricultural commodities, and bears forth an entire economy of culture and human behavior. 

In Korea, coffee talk at establishments like Starbucks or Coffee Bean is a social must, especially if you are a coed with afternoons free.  Likewise, coffee in its many forms, is the mental crutch that millions of office workers, professionals, and educators like me desperately rely on between the hours of 6am to 6pm (booze takes over after six).

In my short year since becoming a caffeine dependent, I’ve made a few observations about coffee and people.  I’ve noticed that people who imbibe coffee select a coffee preparation method that reveals their personality.  Look around your home.  Look in the faculty lounge or office.  How do you drink your coffee? 

1) Buyers – Easygoing, carefree (or careless)
These drinkers prefer convenience.  This group seems to take as its motto: I love coffee or I need coffee, but there is little patience or time to accept the responsibilities of making coffee.  Perfectly willing to fork over cash to address any of life’s problems, as long as it costs no more than $10.

2) Mixers – Young and inexperienced
First of all, instant coffee is not coffee.  Let’s acknowledge it for what it is-powdered caffeine.  Most mixers are either real coffee drinkers facing a caffeine dependent emergency (and are willing to choke down something that can hold them over) or simply put, they are not real coffee drinkers at all. These ‘fake coffee’ drinkers, as I once was, have merely started on a gateway journey towards the addictive grip of caffeine.  They tend to be open minded, inexperienced, and sometimes gullible to things people say.  Overall, they are innocent about the world and are desperately in need a cup of the black stuff to wake their minds up.  Keep an eye out for people who like to mix all sorts of atrocities into their coffee.  Such coffee faux pas include mocha mixes, dollops of white sugar, syrup, and/or milk products.  Take their hand and lightly chide: “Would you put sugar in your milk? Drink it as nature intended!”     

3) Steepers – Creative people
This group is filled with artists and lovers.  A largely bohemian crowd sensitive to nature, the five senses, and kindness, this is the personality that says do no harm to the coffee.  Steepers have what few other types of coffee drinkers have- time. 

I think a painter friend of Matisse once remarked, “Time is money, but coffee buys us time.”  Deep.  As a subset of steepers, the cold coffee steepers are an aloof, introverted bunch who totally prefer their time alone.  They are seldom seen in public, as they spend their entire afternoons lost in their own philosophy. They ignore their Rube Golberg-ian drip contraptions which drip coffee at an interminable rate of one cup every four hours.  Of course there is the sub-subset of cold-brew ghetto snobs.  They have no money but retain the snob.

French press steepers are totally the opposite.  They are friendly, practical and enjoy the mild taste of coffee.  Through the simple method of pouring boiling water into the ground coffee, waiting a few minutes, and then pressing the grinds out, these people offer the world an optimistic practicality.  When receiving a cup, expect to taste an almost tea-like coffee and then bask in the romantic afternoon sunlight as you discuss how much good you can do for the world.

4) Percolators – Subdued Mr. Coffees
Standard automatic coffee drinkers are the mainstream.  They don’t rock the boat, and with an almost unacknowledged shame, they are full blown coffee addicts.   These are your suburban drinkers, hiding in plain sight, who work hard to feed their coffee addictions.  Like the machines that make their coffee they also percolate with a wide range of emotions as unforeseeable as the bottom of a cup of joe.  With each job promotion they switch to a better quality roast or a more optioned automatic percolator.  Whatever their neighbors drink and buy, they buy and drink.  From time to time, when things boil over, they may even have an affair with a hazelnut blend. But they always go back to the standard roasts eventually.

Some people take the percolating too far.  Out of this group are the banquet automatic coffee drinkers.  These folks count on coffee volume in the 20+ cup range.  You can find these drinkers at company conferences, hotel buffets, and the occasional backyard wedding.  These folks are gregarious, sometimes gluttons, but also generous and economical.  They are the Costco coffee drinkers, opting to give you as much value as they can, but certainly not the most memorable taste.      

5) Steamers – “Type A” extroverts
Machine-made espresso is the drink of choice for these coffee bosses, and they will not take anything less than the most concentrated form imaginable.  With high stress jobs and little time to enjoy coffee, these drinkers are compact, fiery, testy, and demanding people who expect coffee ten minutes ago.  They like to be served and have a sharp retort ready if their espresso is too big or too watery.  They will put money down because they enjoy the finer things rewarded by life and hard work.  As a subset there are those who have made it, and with success, they have purchased the largest coffee makers around-an espresso machine complete with steamer, cappuccino makers, and enough buttons and handles to create a job title for it (baristas).

And lastly the final subset is the homemade espresso burnout.  This is an espresso drinker who has either retired or been fired with the meltdown of his company.  Left with a few more minutes at home, but unable to downgrade to a more diluted drink, they brew solitary shots of espressos over the stove in their simpler stovetop espresso makers.

For certain, coffee brings out the best in us or at least the part that our lives require.  As those of us who drink and prepare coffee know, our personality is most revealed when we take the coffee away.  When we are stripped bare from caffeine, we and others are able to see what we are without the magic.  How far we’ve fallen with the pistons mis-firing, about to fall asleep, acting panicky, fidgety, or ready to fight or take flight.  But this, I know, is the worst of we can bare before we run for our mugs.

–Michael has found that coffee is the inspiration he’s been searching for his entire life

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