I grew up not drinking coffee. My parents didn't drink it, and when a guest came over wanting coffee, my mom would pull out an old percolator, and would always comment that she wish coffee tasted like it smelled--the smell of that percolator was wonderful, but the taste was what you would expect--bitter and thin (she was probably using some supermarket ground coffee can that had been in the pantry for years).
In 1987 a friend camped out and got great tickets to the first two shows of U2's Joshua Tree tour (this was in Tempe, Arizona--I was at ASU at the time). I bought tickets from him, front row for the second show next to him, but way in the mezzanine for the first with a spare ticket. I sold the ticket next to mine to an Ethiopian exchange student who lived in our dorm.
You can probably see where this is going--walking across campus to the arena, he mentioned coffee, and I said I didn't drink it. He was shocked, and said "that is because you have not had coffee from my country." There was one of the first serious coffee places (I think it was Coffee Plantation, although it might not have had that name yet). We got some Yirgacheffe, and I was hooked. It did taste like it smelled! Better, even.
It's fun reading this long thread because I've been through all the research over the decades, tried lots of methods. I love most of them, but french press Yirgacheffe is still my favorite...
