I'll chime in to agree that it does take some time to get used to it, but after the transition period you don't miss it.

Giving up sweetened drinks and learning to cook healthy foods from scratch have been my most effective lifestyle changes.

Just to add a bit, we bought a Breville espresso and grinder. I only use some whole milk to make my coffee and no sugar. My wife uses a little agave syrup and skips most of the milk.

Milk has a bit of milk sugar in it. So you get some sweetness that way.

Agave syrup is virtually pure fructose. As a sugar alternative it's ... not that great. The insulin response is fairly low, true, but the high fructose content carries its own risks.

<https://www.healthline.com/nutrition/agave-nectar-is-even-wo...>

Stevia would be a non-sugar-based sweetener, though it does have a distinctly different taste.

I'd learned to drink coffee with milk/cream, no sugar. With decent beans (Trader Joe's Bay Blend, e.g., nothing fancy) and a Moka pot that's more than sufficient.

Have you tried playing around with using the same grinder, but switching up the beans and brewing method?

I think a lot of people go espresso at home, but I do think that's an extremely difficult thing to transition to consuming black unless you're really into the hobby of it all and have adjusted. It's just really intense, which naturally blends well with the fats and sugars in dairy, especially with most espresso roasts being darker. If I personally go espresso, it's either a latte or black Americano.

You can either get better coffee or you can also just get used to the flavor. I didn't like it and after about a year it became fine, now I have a lifetime of no sugar coffee unlocked.

I think this is something that people don't appreciate about being acclimated to sugar coffee. It takes a while to adapt, you can't just try it periodically and try to convince yourself it's better than the milky alternative, contrast is too significant, like comparing a pear and a slice of dry whole grain bread, or walking vs driving, or going to the gym vs not. A couple of months though and you'll probably be well on the way. In a pinch I'll grab a black coffee from McDonalds, since it's more on the medium side anyway, and it's perfectly serviceable.

I honestly can't tell much difference between expensive coffee and Maxwell House. But in general I've never nerded out over coffee, wine, bread, cheese, whiskey, or any other food or beverage.

I don't add sugar to my coffee either.

I’ve tried lots of different coffee’s and I keep going back to (don’t laugh) Folgers Instant. Maybe it’s because it’s what my parents had when I was a kid. Nothing else is quite like it.

Unfortunately, I add 100 calories of crap to it. But I drink it slower than Coke and it’s at least half the calories of a 32oz (my other vise). I use it as a way to lower my calorie count, just a little.

Surprisingly less calories in 32oz of Coke than I was expecting, less than a standard Starbucks sugary drink probably. Regarding coffee, people like what they like, and there's a lot of memories I also have associated with it, as well as drinking copious amounts of Coke for that matter.

If you ever want to try and ease off both those vices, I'd simply recommend buying a McDonalds coffee, buying a Starbucks Blonde Americano, and then taking them home and brewing a cup of the folgers instant with no additions. Get someone to pour them into identical cups, and have them play a shell game (move the cups around to hide which ones they are), then try them back and forth. Try to avoid anything with sugar in it for a few hours before. I bet you'll pick out some differences and maybe even like them, then if you want to try and delete the sugar from your coffee, avoid it in exchange for black coffee for at least a few months. It's not as hard as it seems, but it does take some time.

Then if you like, play around with easy home brewing methods like french press or pour over, grinding beans etc.. those were probably the most impactful things I tried when I went on the same journey. Grinding recently roasted beans before brewing was eye opening. I honestly didn't believe black coffee could be palatable, and was drinking Folgers with half and half from the big red can for ages.

I can easily tell the difference between the two, but I really don't care so long as the coffee is brewed well. I still like Maxwell House Black Silk, but at home I grind my own beans and brew in a French Press.

What I don't like is "Church Coffee", where it has brewed within an inch of its life and is the darkest, most bitter/burned flavor that ever existed.

The best coffee I have ever had was from a coworker's French press. (:

The best coffee you'll ever have is one that was made for you with care :) Pay it forward if ya can.

Cheese is worth it, a bit. First because it’s way leas of a bullshit industry when compared to wine for example, and also because (particularly if you’re in europe) there is so much variety of cheese at overall an affordable price. And you largely don’t need tools or fancy accessories. If anything, you could get something nice to paid it with :)

Here in Singapore cheese is a lot more expensive than in Europe, alas.

I can definitely tell the differences between different coffees or teas or bread etc. The range for wine isn't that large. And that's not just in 'quality', but also just in less variety than eg (craft) beers or breads.

Do you add cream or milk?

I was able to switch to coffee and a little half and half with nothing else. That seems to be good enough for me and pretty low calorie and sugar content.

Drinking black coffee only has been difficult though, even with more expensive coffee (I'm not sure what's considered higher quality necessarily, but I have an espresso machine and I'm grinding whole beans for brands of coffee that websites claim are good)

From my cursory sense of espresso, it's a bit of a finicky, expensive, and niche thing to enjoy in the raw. It's my impression that the overwhelming majority of people in Canada and the U.S for example enjoy their espresso in an espresso-based drink, like a latte or cortado, because the intensity and texture of it mixes quite well with the fats and sugars in cream or milk, and is often made from darker roasts which balance out well. It would be very hard to transition from that to just raw espresso made from any bean.

I personally do not enjoy espresso on its own enough to invest in that sort of equipment, and am fine just getting that periodically at a cafe.

Anyone recommending any particular coffee on the internet should qualify it with their brewing method and personal preferences, because some people like a french press, some people like espresso, or aeropress, or pourover, for various reasons, and none are better than any other, but some people like the intensity of straight espresso, and some people like what you'd call drip/filter coffee, which would be a classic cone that you drip water through.

Likewise, among "high quality" coffee, there's a world of variety. Many great South American beans lean into chocolatey, but some end up quite sweet and fruity, while east african or indonesian beans can pretty much taste like candy. Quality usually refers to "grade", which is more technical and I'm not too well versed on, but to me it means how well the roasted product reveals the potential of a well-selected batch. Sounds a bit pretentious, but basically if you like bitters or cocoa or milk or dark chocolate, high quality beans will make that very enjoyable, both because it was a good crop from the right region, and because the roaster did their job by leaving enough of the sugars and moisture in the bean throughout the roasting process. It's worth experimenting with all of this.

If it doesn't taste that good, it can be because any of those other variables are off, or the blend that the roaster chose to make wasn't a good selection; they might have chosen to mix a brazillian with an east african and got the balance wrong for your taste, or it's too bitter because they roasted it too long, or it might just be stale, or you just don't like it because it's not your vibe.

Right now, I'm doing pour overs with a Hario Switch or V60 dripper and use a modest grinder. It's a pretty standard and inexpensive setup, the dripper usually comes in plastic or glass, and I get beans that are roasted in the neighbourhood within the month for about ~$10USD or sometimes more, and often they'll be an african or columbian blend. It costs me very little and is a simple pleasure. This is probably what I'd recommend if you were looking to play around, it's cheap and would require only the most marginal of equipment changes. It admittedly did take me a long time to taper off the cream and milk, I'd get it from McDonalds or whatever, but now I can even drink that stuff black pretty easily, but it's nearly impossible to tolerate if you're just side-by-side comparing with a coffee+milk mix, the contrast is too harsh.

I do still drink an occasional soda fwiw, and enjoy a latte, but now that I've figured out how to find and make good black coffee, there's no turning back. I'd rather the sugar come from a dessert.

Before we got the espresso machine I was using a manual grinder and a pourover daily and still have the equipment. I do use it sometimes still but the espresso machine is very convenient.

The best tasting coffee beans I found for the manual grinder / pourover setup was Mayorga brand Mayan Blend coffee (Medium Roast), which you can get on Amazon. Although even then I was putting a little half and half in there.

There's not too many neighborhood coffee roasters nearby (there's only one non-chain coffee shop near us, it's a bit of a dead zone). If I drive half an hour or more I start to have some choices though (three places if I drive 30 minutes, a couple more if I drive further), so at some point I should make the drive (or go a little out of my way when I'm roughly in that area for some other errand).