I’m taking a break from coffee. Despite years of consumption, it seems my caffeine tolerance is so low that, even at just two cups a day, it messes with my sleep. There is only one problem: I love coffee. Love, love, love it. Not for the effect but for the taste.
Naturally, I have been racking my brain about what else I could drink, and so far, no satisfying answers have emerged. Hot chocolate? Too sweet. Tea? Different flavor. Caffeine-free? Well, it’s never really caffeine-free.
This morning, however, I had an idea: What if there was a cocoa-based drink that tastes mostly like coffee? Cocoa beans are bitter. The sugar is what makes it sweet. I’ve had not-super-sweet hot chocolate before. Couldn’t you make a thick ganache, then use that as a base for a coffee-style drink? You could even make “cocoaccino.” The whole lot of milk-based coffee variations, basically.
As I was already thinking about how you might have to roast the beans, what kind of mixtures you might have to try, and whether it was possible to get the bitterness-to-sweetness ratio just right to match coffee’s taste, I realized: This is someone else’s journey. It’s a fun idea, but not my path to walk on.
Done right, this could be a big business. There must be plenty of people who’d like to keep coffee’s taste minus the caffeine, and I mean zero caffeine, not the pseudo-decaf we have today. Done right, however, this would also take years to do. It would probably require a good amount of money, too. Now, I love coffee, but I don’t love it that much. I can cope with water and peppermint tea. I’ll be just fine.
It is hard sometimes, letting go of the journey’s that are not meant for you – but the sooner you can do it, the better.
It’s okay. Someone else will take care of it. And if they don’t, the world will still keep turning. You stick to your path. You already know what you came here to do.
Don’t go on someone else’s journey. Set your ideas free so they can make someone else’s day.