Yay @mindy !! Love your essay. Was having a nice warm cup of coffee as I was reading, and to my suprise, your essay is on coffee. Needless to say, I don't need a drama to incite me to increase my caffeine intake, goodness gracious I drink about 2-3 cups of caffeine (any type) a day.

As an ode to both dramas and coffee, this is lovely. Coffee is my one true love, and though I prefer mine strong and bitter, I have contemplated ordering a box of Maxim Gold. Maybe I'll do it soon, and tip my cup to Ji-an.

Very nice @mindy You would probably like Buamdong Revenge Club if you haven't seen it.

I am neutral when it comes to tea vs coffee, but Koreans seem to love Americanos, which I despise (sorry, Americano lovers). Hehe, maybe that is why I love Oh Jak Doo so much... he always goes for cappuccino.

As a fellow coffee lover I welcome you.

As a person that has a hard time going a Day without.....I kind of feel bad you took that first sip.

What does the Maxim Gold taste like? It lookex like Ji An put a few into her cup/iced tea glass.
I'm not a coffee snob either. My favorite will always be a medium/dark roast with half & half. Yet, I love flavored coffee creamers and coffee shop concoctions. With warmer weather coming I've been thinking of Starbucks salted caramel fraps, with the actual salt.
CP was my second drama. Gong Yoo!
Need to check out Shopping King Louis after seeing him in Reply 1997.

I really want to try the mixed rice or kimchi....but I don't do well with spicy. But those big metal bowls of rice look so good.

Ha! I'm drinking a maxim gold right now. I started buying it because of Shopping King Louis too :)

@mindy, I love this so much! And this coming from a gal who. still really does not like the taste of coffee, no matter how many times I make it and try it. 😂

😂 Your essay was so fun and relatable, and definitely had me nodding any smiling anyhow. *goes to drink tea*

Thanks @mindy-- I really enjoyed your post and your writing! LOL @ "Unbidden, my fingers were typing “maxim gold coffee” into Amazon and "What a lovely, cheesy circular thought!".

I've seen the Maxim Gold sticks in quite a few dramas now, but they always remind me of our adorable Shopping King. That was some cleverly integrated PPL.

I'm really trying to cut back on late-night drama-watching. We have a lot of Alzheimer's disease in my family and there's some evidence that insufficient sleep contributes to the buildup of amyloid plaques (Alzheimer's-related proteins) in the brain. It isn't easy though!

@mindy Your essay was fun to read! I also have always liked the smell of coffee but I haven't gotten to the point of wanting to drink it.

What an awesome post @mindy!Coffee converts me into human when I most need it. I can't drink coffee on a daily basis because the caffeine in it actually keeps me up for good 18-24 hours (Funnily enough, the caffeine in tea is just fine with my body) . So unless I've had a no sleep the night before or have a particularly hard day coming up, I don't get to treat myself with coffee. But, when I do, that first sip is pure bliss

Thank you, @mindy. I'm not a coffee drinker but you've evoked the warmth and comfort that comes with viscerally relating to drama characters through their drinks.

@mindy I relate with Coffee Prince making you want to try it! I bought 3 or 4 coffee drinks (I wasn't brave enough for 'real' coffee, I bought really sweet frozen coffees, I think a Tiramisu, as well) even though I've always hated it! I'm from a coffee-country (since we produce it, it's cheap and available virtually everywhere...like, even small children have coffee for breakfast) I didn't stick with it, though. The flavour is just not my thing...but I have to admit Maxim Gold makes me super curious since everytime someone drinks it in a drama they act like they're drinking ambrosia lol Now you've made me curious as well!

@mindy that was such a fun read! Thank you. I love coffee and Shopping King Luis really made me want to buy Maxim Gold coffee sticks as well. But I keep hesitating because it's such a huge box. What if I don't like it. I wish the would sell a smaller box. So I could try it first. Oh well.

Oooh! What a fun post @mindy; and thought-provoking. I'm NOT AT ALL an expert in any way on South Korean culture, but I recall reading an article somewhere that coffee is seen as a bit of a status/style symbol in Seoul because coffee was/can be expensive. Dunno how true it is but it certainly adds a different dimension to all the coffee I see being dunked in dramas. :)

Like you once were, I'm more of a tea person myself. However, I've discovered that our office canteen has amazing coffee and these days, my coffee intake has shot up substantially.

I like the smell of coffee too! It tastes... interesting. The bitterness turns an otherwise cloying meal/dessert into something yummy~ But maybe that's a bad thing because it makes you eat 3 servings instead of 1.

What a fun read, @mindy! I had my first cup of coffee at 5 years of age, from my aunt, a self-confessed coffee-addict. Also at five, when my coffee carrying doctor who met me after my surgery asked what I wanted to drink, my post-intubated dry throat longed for that coffee he was sipping, but why would a 5-year-old squeak out the word “coffee” as her first words after surgery? He must not have understood me, because I never got it and I’m still bitter! I love the smell of coffee even now, but only drink it when I need a pick me up, usually about 3 pm. Although I’m a self-confessed drama PPL-addict, I have yet to buy any Maxim coffee on my own, but I do have a friend who supplies it! I like my coffee sweet and dark, with very little cream or milk. I was in heaven in Italy where their coffee is really a shot if expresso with about a gallon of sugar. So Maxim isn’t my go-to with all that creamer they must have in it. And Coffee Prince was and is a gem; how could you not drink coffee while watching that? Enjoy your Maxim, mindy!

Wow this really struck me "What I did not expect my Maxim Gold experience to do was to allow me to connect to characters that I otherwise never would find a common ground with. ".

Those moments when PPL isn't glaringly in your face and instead rather than disconnecting the audience, it transports you into their shoes so that you can at least in part, physically experience their side of the story, are amazing. The examples of Mother and My Ahjussi are spot on! As a fellow tea drinker (yet to converted into a coffee lover) I loved reading how Maxim shook your beverage world @mindy!

It was great reading your post and to learn how you got into coffee. I've never tried Maxim Gold, but I wouldn't mind trying a coffee stick provided it was not sweetened. This Beanie likes cream in the coffee but not sugar. Thanks for sharing your coffee experience!

A cup of coffee a day keeps the headache away! Well, at least for me it does! 😂

Thanks for the fun read!

Love your coffee journey despite being an anti-fan of coffee XD
The "coffee" essence(fragrance? smell?) of coffee is what turns me away all the time :-P
But I find coffee & all its variants to be very classy & sophisticated lol. Even the names like latte & cappuccino sound so stylish to me.

So I've settled for the fact that I lack the 'elegant' palate that the coffee lovers have, haha. Thus I admire it from a distance ;-)

What a great essay! Thank you for sharing, Mindy!
I am totally a tea drinker. I love the smell of coffee, but hate the taste. Unfortunately, even sugar or cream don't help. I live in a place where people mainly drink coffee. In cafés and restaurants, tea is more expensive... *sigh* So as a tea drinker, I've taken to buying my tea from importers. Green tea is so refreshing!
I raise a cup to you, may we all enjoy our cuppa!!

I used to down this stuff when I was in korea! Fell in love with the sugary goodness the moment I tried it - satisfies my sweet tooth very nicely!

Pity it’s so hard to get hold of here in the UK, though! Coz by now, I’d have already made it as part of my morning routine.

Thank you for the write up, @mindy - twas’ fun to read. 👍🏼

Now if only there was a follow-up post on how a drama converted someone into a concealer user.

Well written essay @mindy. I can completely empathize with trying something because you saw it in a K-drama. I've done it many times over. I really need to order some Maxim Gold though. Have yet to try that--and red ginseng. I think I can appreciate something different in the coffee world and I do have a bit of a sweet tooth. Having said that, I take my coffee black. It really is an acquired taste, but once you get used to it, you can appreciate the natural flavours. I still remember when I finally tasted the fruity notes that the coffee description claimed was there!

P.S. 1] My moka pot is my best friend. 2] You might like Cafe Cubano.

Hi Mindy, loves your essay! Even before I took drama as a serious part of my life, I used to be a heavy coffee drinker. I used to drink at least 3 cups a day - dark and bitter. Living in Indonesia made it possible for me to drink good coffee; they'er just around your corner! But then I got a serious insomnia when I swore to myself to stop drinking coffee! Then, I drank tea instead! This made me a tea lover who would explore and make hard effort to get some great teas.

But I started drinking coffee again since end of last year. I could not resist of its temptation. The good smells. The bitter taste. Ah, I started drinking it again. But not too much; and not everyday. Coffee is something I would save for a special occasion, like when I want to reward myself, or when I'm with good friends, or when I'm traveling and finding a really good cafe I can't miss. But daily, I drink tea, A LOT! :)

How two of my life addictions sewn in childhood and how I shamelessly blame them equally on my mom:
1) Drama -because she didn't let me watch TV
2) Coffee -because she would put a spoonful into milk to get me drink it

Thanks Mom!

Cute your article. 😄😄😄
I am a total Latin Girl. In my family, 99% drinks coffee. Basically, all of them. I belong to the 0,01% who doesn't?
Why? I don't know.
I remember being a child I heard in the radio that coffee has caffeine and caffeine is a drug, so basically I decided that I day I would never take any drugs.
Nowadays I know it is not exactly like that. And in the meantime I have tasted coffee, I have tried many times for different reasons, once curiosity, then courtesy (since it was offered to me and I couldn't say no). One time a friend of mine wanted to celebrate I was accepted for the master in Germany and invited me to have a cup of cappuccino, and another day a Turkish neighbor wanted to be polite and offered me coffee with milk...
In the meantime I have worked in restaurants and I have prepared coffee myself for the clients.

But however it is: I don't like coffee. Have never liked it and possible I will never do it. Why again? I don't know.

But I am happy for you, that you have your maxime gold. 😄😅😄

I can only imagine your face while drinking your unsweetened latte. 😁

I'm literally having my morning coffee while reading this! I do find it adorable how little Hye-Na from Mother loves coffee lattes. I'm currently watching this drama so I haven't gotten to the part where she likes Maxim Gold coffee sticks yet.

Anyway I actually visited Korea last spring and the amount of coffee shops per main street is insane. Koreans sure do love coffee and I had so much good coffee while I was there visiting :D

Haha! Those Maxim Gold coffee sticks are in my Amazon wish list just waiting for me to hit "buy"...all bc of SIG in SKL! LOL!

Okay, now I just had to order some! If it ends up being a bit too weak, i can always add my packets to some coffee instead of water!

ah, Maxim Gold. I never got tempted to buy it to drink, but I was curious whether I could catch robbers and serial killers. But I don´t have a lightsaber to kick the cup over with, so I guess that´s off.

Thanks for your caffeinated essay, @mindy.

* toasts Mindy with a large mug of "Consciousness in a Cup" *

I started drinking coffee in high school, and was an avid guzzler of the stuff up until a few years ago. My main reason was to get my eyes open in the morning, and keep them open later in the day and evening, especially while studying or working.

One of my cousins worked for a big commercial coffee company in Honolulu that supplied hotels, restaurants, and other large institutional customers. I nearly keeled over once when I visited him and he whomped up a great cup of joe for me from a another vendor, a small local specialty firm that had the best macadamia- and hazelnut-flavored coffee I ever drank. At one time they even offered passion fruit flavor, which was wild. I was aghast that he wasn't drinking his own company's product. But he was the plant manager and liked the other outfit's roast better! LOL! A true coffee freak.

An interesting thing I learned from my cousin: The lighter the roast, the higher the caffeine content. That's because the roasting process burns the caffeine. I detest dark roasts because the beans taste burnt to me -- and they contain less of the caffeine which was my whole reason for drinking the stuff in the first place. I've since read that lower-quality beans are often roasted darker -- and used for instant.

The best varieties of coffee are arabica trees, from what I've read. Robusta varieties are not as delicately flavored, and are mainly turned into instant coffee, at least in the US. No one expects it to taste exquisite, but it is serviceable. It's convenient (if you have no time, patience, or place for coffee grinders, drip makers, filters, etc., etc.), and it does the job, especially as it can be doctored with milk, sugar, flavored creamer, etc.

A few tips for those new to the ebony brew: coffee is a very heavily sprayed crop. Twenty years ago my kid sis the biochemist noticed she didn't get the shakes any longer after switching to biodynamically-grown coffee from Mexico. By definition it is organic and cannot be sprayed with pesticides, fungicides, etc. I made the switch myself, and noticed I didn't twitch (unless I drank too much). A good light roast yielded a smooth, satisfying libation that got my neurons firing, but without the eyelid spasms.

Part 1 of 2 - continued -

Reading this made me want to have another cup of coffee and I just down a Caramel Macchiatto with 4 shots. I'm an diehard coffee drinker and have been drinking it all my life- my dad would give me his leftover coffee, though it's really like sugar and cream with a little bit of coffee. I've tried to be a tea drinker, but there's only been 2 or 3 that I've actually liked.