Beer is an acquired taste. So is whiskey. So is coffee. So are kale, fancy cheese, dark chocolate, radishes, grape leaves, tongue, liver, catfish, and sturgeon. We weren’t born liking these things. So why do we consume them?
I have a funny story about drinking coffee: When I was a junior in college, my school’s geology program took a weeklong field trip to the Texas Hill Country. We gathered rock samples and trilobite fossils during the days, then dusted ourselves off and cooked food around the campfire at night. Our professor, Dr. Gary Johnson, was an ace with a rock hammer and smoked fragrant tobacco from a briar pipe. Each night after dinner Dr. Johnson would make coffee over the fire using a metal strainer and a dented tin mug. It seemed like a great hassle. I asked how long he’d been drinking coffee.
