I can take Starbucks beans and make a decent cup of coffee at home (decent, not exceptional). I've never liked the brewed coffee in their stores -- they do a h

I can take Starbucks beans and make a decent cup of coffee at home (decent, not exceptional). I've never liked the brewed coffee in their stores -- they do a horrible job of brewing it. Of course, most "big tub o' coffee" brewing methods produce at best a mediocre brew. Before their espresso bean quality really took a dive, they started introducing the first generation of their automated espresso machines. The same beans that, depending upon barista, produced a decent, sometimes very good, shot from the hand-operated espresso bars, produced an espresso approximating warm, flat cola (really) from the automated bars. I knew one store manager of 10 plus years who would dive in and tweak the automated bar until in produced espresso that was a more palatable "shadow" of a good hand-pulled shot, but his motivation was personal interest and he could not keep the machine producing at that quality -- it was a constant struggle of adjustments that could not be maintained in a commercial environment. I've heard it suggested that they may have started "burning" the beans more in an attempt to compensate for the weakness of the espresso that the automated bars pulled. Also, my impression is that corporate attention shifted to identifying and marketing more categories of merchandise. I hardly ever drink a Startbucks, any more, but I've heard that the quality has improved somewhat since Schultz dove back into operations and told people essentially to fix their quality problems. Apparently, the beans are not being burned as badly. They've also been rolling out a second generation of automated bar (as well as some different automated bars for locations having different volume requirements) that produces a better shot than the first generation. Their in-store brewed coffee still sucks. Their overpriced instant coffee tastes better -- as I've experienced when they first launched it and were offering side-by-side taste test comparisons. P.S. Their best "take home" beans/roasts, in my opinion: Sumatra, and the holiday blends (particularly end-of-year, although Thanksgiving is, I've been told, a fairly similar blend), depending on the year.