The case for bad coffee (2015)

I can sympathize. For example, while I love to go to great pizza restaurants that use the freshest ingredients and the best dough, I am often still attracted to takeaway pizza of worse quality - it's great comfort food.

Like most things, coffee is subject to diminishing returns. I have also owned nearly every device invented to make coffee - as I'm sure many others here have - and I've settled on a simple over-the-mug pour-over cone, but mainly because there's no moving parts or tubes to worry about cleaning. I don't even know what "correct" pour-over technique is, so I'm basically making bog-standard single-serving drip coffee with store-brand beans, and I couldn't be happier with it.

Ultimately I think fancy coffee is the same as fancy beer - it's not about the quality of taste of the thing, but rather it's about tribal membership and signaling. Among certain groups of people, caring deeply about 1% gains in taste value from small changes in coffee preparation or hop blends is a chance to prove your worthiness to the in-group.

The fact that so many can honestly profess that these tiny gains in subjective taste experience are Very Serious Business is a testament to humans' ability to convince ourselves of just about anything.

Congrats, you have bad taste. There's an easy middle ground between "a flat white at a Manhattan coffee shop" and instant coffee. Buy and grind fresh beans. Buy local instead of supporting Big Coffee and poor cultivation practices.

I won't turn up my nose at diner coffee but you don't have to be a snob to notice a huge difference. Besides I have bonded over flat whites before :(

You can take my espresso machine from my cold dead hands. Then again I don’t understand why Americans pay so much for their coffee. Here 1kg of fairly good single origin coffee is 22€ and the quality is miles ahead of instant. You don’t have to become an insufferable snob to enjoy better coffee.

People talk about 'bad coffee' but many times they don't say what constitutes bad coffee. We all have different preferences. There are some very expensive fancy coffees that I dislike because I taste them as overly sour or acidic. Meanwhile I can drink very expensive blue mountain or a very cheap nabob full city dark in an aeropress and enjoy both.

I used to occasionally get starbucks on the way to work but the line ups at the drive through have made 'fast' food not fast, and the price of starbucks coffee seems to have risen so high it wasn't hard to stop doing it.

I've had maxwell house instant, its not great, but its also not sour or acidic, so its just drinkable. Nescafe instant is fine too.