Tuesday, July 24, 2007

Bad Decision-Making in Action

So last night I found myself with a half bag of pre-ground coffee that was on its last legs. The best way I've heard of to get rid of a bunch of coffee at once is to cold-brew it. This method--which is a slow, cold brew, as you may have guessed--uses a lot more coffee, and results in a syrupy coffee concentrate when you're finished. I think it's the stuff Starbucks uses in their iced coffee. The idea is that you can add hot water to this super coffee, or pour it over ice and it won't taste like watery crap as the cubes melt.

I rigged up a supremely low-rent method for my brew. First, I dumped all of my remaining ground coffee into a pot of water (4x as much water as grounds), and let it sit on my counter stewing for about 10 hours. You're supposed to wait for 12 hours, but it still worked okay. Then I poured this soupy mess into my coffee maker since I don't have a fine-mesh sieve or anything, and let it drip into my coffee pot. This took a while, but it eventually got all the concentrate out of the grounds. This is where my bad decision came into play.

It was about midnight or 1, but I had to test the stuff out anyway. So I poured a too-big glass, not knowing how potent the concentrate was, guzzled it down, proclaimed victory, and went to sleep about ten or fifteen minutes later. I had probably the weirdest dreams I've ever experienced and then woke up at 5AM, totally wired and alert, and confused as hell. I kept checking my clock, unable to reconcile the sunlight streaming into my room, my alert state, and my clock, which said it was 5 in the morning. On top of that, I was still vaguely unnerved by my dreams. All in all, extremely unpleasant.

Upon further reflection, I think I inadvertently experienced the bigger, badder, brother of the caffeine nap: http://lifehacker.com/software/sleep/take-a-caffeine-nap-154237.php

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Back in the day, I used to drink 4 or 5 cups of crappy coffee at a Jersey diner before hitting the hay (coffee was the cheapest drink with free refills for us high schoolers who were out past midnight). It surprised me how fast I got used to drinking caffine and then falling asleep without any drawbacks (or crazy dreams). Maybe you just need some more practice?

Nate said...

yeah, normally i'm okay with a few cups of starbucks (that's our equivalent of crappy diner coffee on the west coast, but it's about 4 times more expensive and you don't get refills), and then going straight to bed. I would do that about once a week no problems. I think it had something to do with the fact that this was ultra-concentrated super coffee, and I still drank more than a cup. there must be something different in the composition. maybe it was all that moldy bread I ate with my coffee?

-joking

Anonymous said...

To be honest, your description rings in my mind the Simpsons episode where Bart and Milhouse drink that concentrated Swquishi and they go all crazy and wake up somewhere not knowing how they got there.