Coffee! What is the Worst You Have Ever Been Served?

Where, or what is the worst coffee you have ever tasted?

I am thinking back several years here, back to the good old days when if you asked for coffee it was a simple decision, do you require milk. Do you prefer your coffee black or white?

Would you like some sugar in your coffee?

If yes, how many would you like?

Back then coffee was coffee, no caffeine was mentioned, certainly no decaff.

But back then, growing up in England the only coffee on offer was instant. Coffee machines were almost unheard of in that part of the world. The only time you could get a pot of coffee would be if you went to some posh restaurant. In my case that was never.

So this brings me on to my first experience of a Starbucks or similar style coffee house. Most of us must have had this unsettling experience at some point in our lives. You walk in, just expecting a cup or mug of coffee, and you get a menu recited to you at one hundred miles an hour or so it seems. 99% of which passes completely over the top of your head, I just want a coffee, hot containing milk and some sugar, please. Would you like full fat, half and half and you then get the milk menu.

AAAAAArrrrrgh.

Then you will get asked if you would like a muffin or similar, you refrain from telling them where to stick their vastly overpriced snack foods and join the line to wait for your drink.

Is this the worst experience for me? No nowhere near.

Growing up in England one of my pastimes was given over to watching my favourite football (soccer) team hopefully win. I would travel all over the country to support my team. On cold or wet evenings trying to keep warm one way to try and avoid hypothermia would be to risk the coffee on offer at the snack bar inside the ground. Stadiums might be a word to use here, but most of these places were not up to the standard of being called a stadium.

One night at a ground in London at one of the cities smaller clubs I risked one such cup of coffee. It tasted something like mud, I think the paper or polystyrene container it came in would have tasted better, that drink has to be high up in my list, possibly number 1.

A few more years had passed I was dating girls, or by this time I had moved on to women, and as I arrived at a house to meet my date for that evening she wasn't ready and her daughter asked me if I would like a coffee while I waited. Yes, please! Milk and sugar.

So a few minutes later and my shock as I tasted it, it was stone cold. A mug of cold milk with sugar added. Not even any coffee in there either, I was glad when my date arrived ready and I handed back the untouched drink.

I love my coffee, mostly now I will drink coffee freshly made from beans we grind at home, although I sometimes still have a mug of instant for quickness sake. It has been a long time since I have had a really bad cup of coffee, although some fast food places do sometimes try to pass off what has clearly been sitting there since breakfast as freshly made many hours later.