Crosstalk: A perfect cup of coffee can’t be found

That amounts to more than three cups of ground beans for an 11-cup pot of coffee. Yikes!

It’s not natural for a cup of freshly made coffee to look gray even after creamer has been added.

I call the coffee Mark makes a couple of hours before I arrive the “morning sludge.” It’s become a race to the coffee pot —whoever gets to work first decides the strength of the brew.

I try to picture my co-worker and his wife rising on Christmas morning to sip a cup of mud while watching their two children open presents. That mental picture just doesn’t work.

I can imagine them eating the brew like a steaming mocha pudding. Or, even better, cleaning their good silver by dipping spoons, forks and knives into the toxic waste.

In a day when coffee has become a culinary art form, my co-worker is still a Neanderthal.

He claims that I am a “wimp” and that he has adjusted his barista strategy to “stop my whining.” Truth be told, no one else in the office will drink his coffee either and I think he has become ashamed of tying up the staff coffee pot for his own use.

For Christmas, I am getting Mark a gift card that can be redeemed at a local coffee stand. Maybe if he drinks enough of the good stuff, he will get a clue about what is going on in the rest of the world.

I have come to think that bad coffee may be responsible for Mark’s warped political beliefs. I think we should get Congress to study that issue —at the cost of several million in borrowed funds… But I digress…

Of late, Mark is believing my claim to have one remaining brain cell that is endangered by the caffeine buzz from his coffee. He said that explains a lot, which he did not care to elaborate on.

However, he is now trying to tone down the strength of the coffee and for that I am truly grateful. To the point that I only remind him once a week how hilarious it was to see him lying in cow poop to get a shot of a horse having its hooves checked for our series about a rancher’s life.

By the way, Mark is an expert in long-suffering looks.

He says that I am going to cause an ulcer — but we both know that is his way of explaining away the day in the future that coffee acid finally breaks through his stomach lining.

The popular mystique of coffee is not unlike that which you find among aficionados of wine or pipe tobacco. Complex aromas, hints of this and that, the coffee drinker, like the wine taster and tobacco enthusiasts, can wax eloquent indeed.

My own view is much more utilitarian: Having become addicted to caffeine via soft drinks, I turned to coffee not to enjoy its complex aromas but because I could control the amount of sugar delivered with each serving. I had tried many substitutes, but addiction being what it is, I was unsuccessful.

As a means of delivering caffeine, my coffee is pretty darn effective. My recipe is simplicity itself: Fill the back of the coffee maker with water, fill the basket above the pot with coffee.

If a cup of the resulting brew doesn’t do the trick, there are plenty more where that one came from.

The first time my co-editor tried a cup brewed to my recipe, her eyeballs bugged out and she started babbling about her stomach lining. Her actual critique was unprintable, at least in a family newspaper.

Being a sensitive and caring soul, the next morning I adjusted my recipe: Instead of filling the basket with coffee, I measured it out, two one-cup scoops. The result lacked kick, but was acceptable. To me, anyway.

She still didn’t like it.

This was getting ridiculous. I cut my recipe in half, one scoop and a “pinch.” Better, but still no go!

I figured it was just her, but office rumor circled back; my coffee was “good” but a “wee bit strong.” Said with a sort of a verbal “shudder” at the memory.

Yet another co-worker suggested the purchase of an additional coffee-maker, a “his/her” sort of arrangement, which I rejected.

If you are going to work closely with someone, you have to find the balance, in this case between “paint stripper” and “mamby pamby cat lap.”

Eventually, we came to an actual recipe. Eleven cups of water, one level scoop of coffee. No pinch. Apparently the “pinch,” in combination with only 10 cups of water, was the problem.

So now I make a “perfect” pot of coffee... but not too early, because if I make it at 4 a.m. it lacks whatever coffee drinkers are after by 6 a.m.

It isn’t very good coffee: The aroma is promising, but it lacks body, color and kick.

But office harmony is more important than good coffee, and frankly I was tired of hearing about my coffee’s impact on my co-editors stomach lining.