Hooray. The Biscuit is back in Chapel Hill and ready to eat. After a somewhat disappointing culinary experience in New York, where the ratio of bad restaurants to good ones was much higher than you’d expect, the eating opportunities in the Triangle are quite exciting. Plenty of places that opened over the summer are calling to be tried, and The Biscuit has yet to visit plenty of places that have always been around.

The first post of the semester needs to be fun, though, so we’re going to celebrate a special occasion in any person’s life: the first time he tries coffee. And in our subject’s case, he’s waited 21 years for that first sip.

Meet Biscuit friend Jordan Wingate, whose face has sometimes graced this site. A vegetarian, Jordan likes to stay in shape and eat healthy; he said he had no reason to drink coffee. All of his peers, however, have caffeine, not blood, flowing through their veins. They need it to survive their spasmodic schedules, and they insisted Jordan was missing out.

The Biscuit was also eager to hear an untainted opinion pick the cup of joe he liked the most; Jordan had no idea what coffee was supposed to taste like.

So The Biscuit and friends took the virgin out for coffee one Sunday afternoon (turns out anytime before 7 a.m. is a bad time to have your first seven cups of coffee).

We wanted to give Jordan an assortment of some popular as well as some unexpected Chapel Hill java-joints, so we chose Caffe Driade, McDonald’s, Starbuck’s, Time Out, Weaver Street Market, Open Eye and a pink house on Mallette Street where Jordan lives so he could have some homebrew. Yes, there are more cafes, but they were probably closed, and we felt bad when we realized the damaged we’d inflicted making him intake so much caffeine.

At each place, Jordan enjoyed at least half a cup of coffee black, then with cream, then with cream and sugar, after which we asked his opinion and took his pulse. Although his aerobic excellence is evident from his resting heart rate, we still got an idea of what a shock coffee can be to an unsullied system.

To view his expectations going into the celebration, let’s begin with the last footage ever recorded of Jordan before he had his inaugural cup of coffee. In the same clip we’ll also see his reaction to the first sip. (Sorry the camera didn’t take high-quality video. Just appreciate the audio.)

After that cup, we were off, scurrying to get the man of the hour as many drinks as would fit in his stomach.

We asked Jordan to take notes during the experience, which The Biscuit overlaid on this nifty chart where you can mouse-over each heart rate to see what thoughts were going through his head during each cup:

In the end, surprisingly or not, Jordan was neutral on the drink.

He decided he preferred coffee with cream, no sugar, because “the liquid [cream] neutralized the flavor while masking the bitterness with a sweet smell.” He decided Time Out, the worst brewer, had to try a different blend. He decided that Caffe Driade served the best cup overall. And he decided he was never going to drink coffee ever again. He couldn’t understand why anyone would.

What happened next was surprising, to The Biscuit atleast.

Of course, it takes several experiences with coffee before any one decides he likes the drink. One day you just want it.

But we went about it the wrong way, overwhelming our poor guinea pig with so much caffeine. The substance shocked his system so much he could only have negative memories about coffee. It wasn’t until The Biscuit received an angry call from Jordan’s mother did it become apparent the test subject was in trouble.

“Do you have any what this will do to him?” she asked. “He will be up for days.”

Young, yet experienced coffee drinkers don’t normally worry when they have a shot or two of espresso after dinner, so we weren’t initially concerned. Then he started acting strangely, writing nonsense down, drawing inappropriate pictures, singing out-of-tune songs, running into walls. Here’s an example (as it was starting to get bad. He later threw uncooked kale into the marinara sauce):

Then Jordan did not fall asleep for nearly 30 hours after his last cup.

Just to share his agony, he made sure to send The Biscuit a text message every hour throughout the night.

• (1:45 am) I’m not happy. Expect to hear how unhappy I am every hour until sunrise
• (2:39 am) =/
• (3:04 am) :((
• (4:24 am) =))))
• (5:21 am) Sun will be rising soon. Yes sir it will
• (6:01 am) Six am. A bird twitters gloriously outside
• (7:59 am) Buttercup, wake up

Well, The Biscuit got good sleep.