Coffee Can’t Kill You, It Can Only Make You Stronger

There are things I know are bad for me, like most food and drink. I react to just about everything, including the liquid diet my world-renowned gastroenterologist, Dr Mark Pimentel, put me on for three weeks about twenty years ago. This state of affairs makes me perpetually discouraged, with an attitude of, "might as well make it even worse."

Everybody knows coffee is bad for people with sensitive constitutions like mine. I didn't even start to drink it till I was 35 years old. Hated the stuff. But then one day, having recently experienced my first full-blown panic attack (without knowing what it was), I figured, heck, let's see what coffee can do. I was working at an ad agency, and there was a young man named Rob who'd glommed onto me, not yet figuring out I couldn't do anything for him. He convinced me to walk to Starbucks with him and get a Mocha Frappuccino. That drink made me feel good for a while. It became a weekend ritual. Once a week, I'd have a Mocha Frappuccino and drive down Pacific Coast Highway from LA to San Diego, or out to Palm Springs.

Eventually, the weekend ritual became a daily ritual, sometimes multiple times daily. The panic attacks didn't go away, but they didn't get worse, either.

Every now and then, I'd quit coffee, sometimes for as long as five years. But I always came back. Coffee FOMO. Never mind it makes me feel worse, physically. Emotionally, it reminds me of what life must be like for people whose digestive tracts aren't ruined. I still don't like the taste.

Cold brew is supposed to be gentle on your stomach. So I ordered a bag of Goat Locker from Bonefrog Coffee Company. That's the coffee roaster owned by Tim Cruickshank, retired Navy SEAL. I don't have a sophisticated coffee palate, but when I opened the bag, it smelled and looked delicious. Here's what I did with it.

Measured out 180g and made an extra course grind. Poured it into a standard 1L French press. Filled to the top with water, covered it, and stuck it in the fridge for about 16 hours. A 1:5 ratio of coffee to water. Once that was over, I took it out of the fridge, pressed down the plunger, then poured through a Melitta gizmo with #2 filter into a quart Mason jar. Now we've got cold brew concentrate that you can store in the fridge for up to a week, I'm told.

To make my favorite concoction, a sort of Louis version of Thai iced coffee, I pour a couple of ounces of concentrate into a small Mason jar, and I mix it with two coffee spoons of sweetened condensed milk that I already put into the jar. Lick the spoon. Add whole milk, a bit over 1:1 ratio. The coffee concentrate is strong. You can add as much milk as you like. Then, enough ice to top off the jar. That's it. Simple. Next, I'm going to try it with coconut milk, because maybe it's the milk that's causing me grief.

They say if you do the same thing over and over, expecting different results, it's called dog logic. Doing the same thing over and over, knowing you'll get the same results, and knowing you won't like it, is what I call Louis logic. No matter how much it might seem like coffee will kill me if I go on like this, the truth is that it won't. My digestive tract is already ruined, and there's not much else I can do that will make it worse.

Might as well wake up and suffer the coffee.