Acquired Tastes - Coffee

As humans, we naturally crave sweeter or sometimes saltier food. Our love for ice cream, cakes, potatoes in every form, and fried chicken. The list goes on. Perhaps this craving comes from our body in the most biological way - that we are low on sugar or salt, and require some, lest we stop functioning. Perhaps it is entirely coincidental that we love the taste of these foods. Maybe we evolved as a species to have our taste buds wired like this.

But there are many things that we don't like having in our mouths growing up. In particular, the bitter things. And among the bitter foods that are available to us, coffee stands out. Even as we continue to hate on bitter gourds and Chinese medicine, humans do seem to enjoy the bitterness of coffee. With some avid coffee lovers scowling at those who add sugar into their coffee. 

And yet, nobody loves coffee as soon as they can start tasting. Coffee is an acquired taste. It takes a few tries to get into it. One's virgin coffee experience is often faced with an expression of disdain, followed by a "what the hell is that?" For some, they hate it after that first mouth. But after a few years, they taste it again with a skeptical mindset, and fall in love with it. Others, resort to coffee because of the need to stay awake in lectures, or for the sake of staying up till 6am to finish an assignment. And after having coffees for a month straight, cognitive dissonance occurs and they fall in love with it. 

For me? I only started drinking coffee after I met Arica, and after starting work at Populus. While Arica would bring me to various cafes to drink coffee, it wasn't enough to get me hooked. I get a free drink each shift while I'm working, so you can imagine the amount of mochas and lattes I've had. After drinking the coffee there for a few months, I started to feel a difference in my taste buds. Every so often, I'd go to a cafe with Arica or Max and we'd have a coffee. And I find myself lost in my thoughts, I'd be thinking "huh, this doesn't taste as good." But, I don't know what's good. Before, I would have just found all coffee bad in general. Then, it hit me. I'd grown so used to the beans at Populus and how they do their coffee, that I'd taken a liking to that specific taste. It could very well be dissonance in this case, or unconsciously, I've learnt to appreciate it. 

The coffee at Populus has become my benchmark now. And you'll always hear me complaining when I drink coffee from elsewhere. I'd be telling Arica, "I still think Populus is better", I shit you not. 

I don't have proper photos of coffee, because most of the time, I'm drinking it at work. And I just wanna also say, thank you to all the baristas at Populus for always giving me free coffees, I mad appreciate it. Especially Dada and Canon because they're usually the ones making for me when I go down for free coffee after school or when I'm studying.