Fly #5: Hot Chocolates can warm, but will never fill the void of the anti-coffeeist.

I don’t publish many of my bitches on life (cyclists, AFL, commerce students, olives, smoking, cats, the expression "first world problems", cotton wool, any phrase starting with “I’m just saying...” or ending in “but”, charity salespeople, tram inspectors, Channel Nine, the Herald Sun, Tony Abbott, mint-flavoured chocolate) as everyone hates them anyway so it’s boring and there’s no space to show you people how the world should work.  But I feel that this thorn in my side, that small thing that makes life just a little less sweet is worth a public growl. HOT CHOCOLATES.

I am of the minority who don’t like coffee. The one percent. Yes I went there. There are a few out there, and when I encounter one I feel like I’ve met a kindred spirit. From about age 15 onwards we have felt the shame of “going to a coffee” and ordering a hot chocolate instead. Our rogue tastebuds have shunned us from every Melburnian’s rite of passage, the coffee date and it subsequent quality analysis. If only I could be like those sophisticated urbanites that sip their coffee and delight in the pinnacle of social norms, the “good coffee bad coffee” conversation...

“Oh god. I think I have found the newest contender for Australia’s worst coffee”

“Mine is practically cold. You know that really small alleyway...”

“Degraves?”

“No don’t be so mainstream. It’s sort of near Russell Street, but you take a few turns, no one knows it of course, except me, it is JUST AMAZING. I’ll take you there, once I finish my spinach and ricotta quiche with caramelised onion and sundried tomatoes”.

I will never be part of this hip, niche crew. So we disenfranchised coffee-haters have tried to bargain with a culture of hot chocolate. This seems like a suitable alternative, right? It’s chocolate, so that’s a plus. Surely chocolate is more fun than those weird, bitter coffee beans. And it’s hot, the same-ish colour as coffee, and it costs roughly the same. And you get it in those brown bumpy cups. I would go from cafe to cafe around the city, uni, greater Melbourne and even international travels, building my repertoire of what makes a good hot chocolate. There is an art to a good hot chocolate, I insisted. The exact balance between powder and milk. Pink vs. white marshmallows.

Finally, when I learnt to make hot chocolates myself I realised that I had been completely screwed over. Hot chocolate needs NO SKILL WHATSOEVER to make*. Hot milk in the metal pipey thing that makes noise, hot chocolate powder and VOILA. Why should I pay four dollars for what clearly does not require professional attention? The worldwide caffe-nazi regime has bullied us into forking out all those five dollar notes just so we can half feel like we belong to your caffeinated cult. Most of the time, it doesn’t even work and ends up just being a cringey experience of annoying loose change, the receiving end of pity/patronising/wtf looks and luke-warm chocolate milk froth.

I urge my fellow shamed coffee heretics to ask yourselves – did you actually want to pay four dollars for a chocolate milk drink, or do you just feel awkward around your snazzy latte drinking friends? Break the mould and be proud to order something fabulous and worth your gold coins. Back in Year 8, a large Iced Tim Tam with extra caramel sauce was standard. I would regard the cappuccino/latte/long black/macchiato choices with bemusement. How boring grown-ups must be, I would ponder, if they pass up a drink with cookies in it, for something that looks like regurgitated tar. We can’t rebel against Melbourne’s grey weather but we can rebel against its coffee fascism.

From here on, I proudly hate coffee and I will order the most complicated thing possible on the drink menu to give my five dollar note, and that barrister a workout. No way are they getting away with milk-and-cocoa-powder-that’s-four-dollars-thanks. But if you are still afraid of the sipping army in black turtlenecks, and you need that hot drink to belong, then whatever you do, don’t buy tea. Four dollars for hot water and a few leaves is an insult beyond any whinge blog.

*Let me reiterate here, we are talking the old school hot chocolates that use that same little hot milk machine as their caffeinated cousins. Not the orgasmic pure melted chocolate that unites all coffee and hot chocolaters alike in a fantasy of molten decadent glory. For further clarification, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPCf44kFK3s.