6 ms·

Convenience, obviously. Why own a car when you could ride a bike? Sure, it will take you 10x as long to get anywhere, but you can always just leave earlier.

benrbray 8y ago
This comparison makes no sense. Regular coffee makers make far less waste and are just as convenient. Hell, I grid my coffee by hand and brew it one cup at a time with one of those conic filters and it still takes only 6-7 minutes.
- EpicEng 8y ago
  >are just as convenient. Hell, I grid my coffee by hand and brew it one cup at a time with one of those conic filters and it still takes only 6-7 minutes. It takes about two seconds to pop in a k-cup, maybe 20 more every N cups to fill up water. Also allows for different grounds to be used on a per cup basis. Convenience and speed is the entire reason these things exist.
  - slothtrop 8y ago
    The single-cup brew is what sold it I think. Coffee machines were already just as fast and familiar, with fast cleanup, but programmatically brew a whole pot. You could achieve the same single cup convenience with a filter using pour-over or clever-dripper.
- rosser 8y ago
  For a nontrivial number of people, that's probably about five minutes too many. Are you also factoring in the cleanup of your coffee-making accoutrements? That's a few minutes, too. Some people just want their cuppa, with absolutely minimal fuss. Your metric for what is or isn't convenient isn't necessarily anybody else's, and other people aren't "wrong" for having different metrics than yours. Optimizing for time spent in the process of making the thing is a perfectly cromulent priority.
  - pbhjpbhj 8y ago
    It's not just convenience, it's fashion and wealth signalling. Instant coffee takes seconds, a couple of minutes if you include boiling the water.
    - rosser 8y ago
      How is it fashion or wealth signaling if you're doing it at home, alone? I'm sure it is for some people, but status signaling is baked into our monkey brains at such a deep level, I find it a bit silly to be something we throw shade at people for doing. But even if Joe the status-signaling pod coffee drinker is status signaling, he probably also appreciate the extra five minutes in the morning, or whatever. Also, I've never tasted an instant coffee that didn't disappoint, usually profoundly. The pods are actual, real-time brewed coffee, with the same level of convenience.
      - pbhjpbhj 8y ago
        We had a commercial Gaggia bean-to-cup machine, fresh ground, etc., the difference to me is noticeable obvs, but it's not worth the costs. It's only a drink.
      - thaumasiotes 8y ago
        > How is it fashion or wealth signaling if you're doing it at home, alone? The tasteful way is to invite people to visit your home where they can see it. The tacky way is to tell people about it.
    - EpicEng 8y ago
      >Instant coffee takes seconds, a couple of minutes if you include boiling the water. Another excellent example. Now we have coffee which tastes awful and still takes longer.
  - slothtrop 8y ago
    Cleanup? A regular coffee machine uses disposable filters. The advantage of the k-cup over this is brewing for a single cup of variable size. However this is easily achievable with pourover or "clever dripper" methods, each of which use the filter and thus have little to no cleanup. There's no justification for the cup system at all.
- technovader 8y ago
  Actually it is a great example when you think of how much waste and pollution you create by driving a car instead of walking or riding a bike. Great example. People like to virtue-signal but when they really want something all convictions go out the window.
- a11595 8y ago
  I drink about 10 cups of coffee per day (enjoy the taste). You are suggesting I spend over an hour, 7 hours per week (a full workday) making my coffee? That's literally insane. Now, I'd never get one of these machines, because it tastes like ass - I tried it at work. People at the office walk up, pick from 20 different flavors, and make their cup. What is it you suggest to replace that? 20 huge office pots that someone refills from a huge drip machine, so some are out and some get underused and tossed/refilled in a few hours? Your comparison is what does not make sense. You are taking your use case, which does not apply to 90% of the self-brew cases. Literally the definition of a strawman. I personally think cars are a bad invention, and I don't see the use. I live across the street from work, and once a week take a lyft. Why are all these people driving?? I just can't figure it out. Now, here's what I do actually do. I have Kona green cherry and Peaberry light roast. I take a cup of green and grind it fine in my conical grinder. I double-filter tap water, boil it, then filter it again the next day once cool. I use that to boil the green for about 10min in a large steel pot. I drink half of that mixed with fairlife fat free milk. Good for 1st drink of the morning. While that's going on, I grind 2 cups of peaberry, and dump it into the pot, adding a lot more boiling water. Boil for 2 minutes, let sit for 10. Now it's mixed light roast peaberry and green, for that lightly charred lawnmowerbag taste. It's naturally quite sweet, but sometimes I'll add a splenda. I spend more than an hour per day on coffee. The process is relaxing. When I'm at work running from one meeting to the next, I pop in a cup with some weird flavor and go on my way. If I had to do what you do, I wouldn't do it at all. That's the price of your 6-7 minutes - a barrier to entry that's just too damn high.
jchanimal 8y ago
For a second I thought you lived in my world, where it’s the car that takes so much longer.
- EpicEng 8y ago
  Nope, I live in the world that most other people do (in the US).
  - keithpeter 8y ago
    I outwalked a traffic jam this morning as I often do (admittedly in a narrow time frame)
    - EpicEng 8y ago
      Well it would take me an hour to ride my bike to work, but I get here in ~11 minutes in my car. True for most people in the US. And as I wrote that last bit, I realized that I should not have said "in the _world_".
      - PascLeRasc 8y ago
        I have the opposite during warm weather. I have a 12-15 minute bike commute that takes 45 minutes by car and an hour by bus. I'm sure that's not the case if you don't have decent bike infrastructure though.
      - emj 8y ago
        Yes but that is an issue with your choices, which makes sense we all want convenience, but you could make those choices from a bicycle perspective. I did, atm I get about 10 minutes extra every day because actualy do something with my commute. This is true for every place I've lived in (Europe, NA/SA and Asia), you just have to make the choice.
    - rosser 8y ago
      And I out-walked (well, tied) the Uber driver who cut me off at a crosswalk, to dropping off his fare across the street from my apartment a few blocks further up the hill, the other night. Contextually constrained anecdata like ours simply aren't relevant to the general point here. For the vast majority of people in the parts of the world where using pod coffee machines is a meaningful thing to talk about, your commute is a driving or transit kind of thing, not walking or biking.

benrbray 8y ago

This comparison makes no sense. Regular coffee makers make far less waste and are just as convenient. Hell, I grid my coffee by hand and brew it one cup at a time with one of those conic filters and it still takes only 6-7 minutes.

EpicEng 8y ago
>are just as convenient. Hell, I grid my coffee by hand and brew it one cup at a time with one of those conic filters and it still takes only 6-7 minutes. It takes about two seconds to pop in a k-cup, maybe 20 more every N cups to fill up water. Also allows for different grounds to be used on a per cup basis. Convenience and speed is the entire reason these things exist.
- slothtrop 8y ago
  The single-cup brew is what sold it I think. Coffee machines were already just as fast and familiar, with fast cleanup, but programmatically brew a whole pot. You could achieve the same single cup convenience with a filter using pour-over or clever-dripper.
rosser 8y ago
For a nontrivial number of people, that's probably about five minutes too many. Are you also factoring in the cleanup of your coffee-making accoutrements? That's a few minutes, too. Some people just want their cuppa, with absolutely minimal fuss. Your metric for what is or isn't convenient isn't necessarily anybody else's, and other people aren't "wrong" for having different metrics than yours. Optimizing for time spent in the process of making the thing is a perfectly cromulent priority.
- pbhjpbhj 8y ago
  It's not just convenience, it's fashion and wealth signalling. Instant coffee takes seconds, a couple of minutes if you include boiling the water.
  - rosser 8y ago
    How is it fashion or wealth signaling if you're doing it at home, alone? I'm sure it is for some people, but status signaling is baked into our monkey brains at such a deep level, I find it a bit silly to be something we throw shade at people for doing. But even if Joe the status-signaling pod coffee drinker is status signaling, he probably also appreciate the extra five minutes in the morning, or whatever. Also, I've never tasted an instant coffee that didn't disappoint, usually profoundly. The pods are actual, real-time brewed coffee, with the same level of convenience.
    - pbhjpbhj 8y ago
      We had a commercial Gaggia bean-to-cup machine, fresh ground, etc., the difference to me is noticeable obvs, but it's not worth the costs. It's only a drink.
    - thaumasiotes 8y ago
      > How is it fashion or wealth signaling if you're doing it at home, alone? The tasteful way is to invite people to visit your home where they can see it. The tacky way is to tell people about it.
  - EpicEng 8y ago
    >Instant coffee takes seconds, a couple of minutes if you include boiling the water. Another excellent example. Now we have coffee which tastes awful and still takes longer.
- slothtrop 8y ago
  Cleanup? A regular coffee machine uses disposable filters. The advantage of the k-cup over this is brewing for a single cup of variable size. However this is easily achievable with pourover or "clever dripper" methods, each of which use the filter and thus have little to no cleanup. There's no justification for the cup system at all.
technovader 8y ago
Actually it is a great example when you think of how much waste and pollution you create by driving a car instead of walking or riding a bike. Great example. People like to virtue-signal but when they really want something all convictions go out the window.
a11595 8y ago
I drink about 10 cups of coffee per day (enjoy the taste). You are suggesting I spend over an hour, 7 hours per week (a full workday) making my coffee? That's literally insane. Now, I'd never get one of these machines, because it tastes like ass - I tried it at work. People at the office walk up, pick from 20 different flavors, and make their cup. What is it you suggest to replace that? 20 huge office pots that someone refills from a huge drip machine, so some are out and some get underused and tossed/refilled in a few hours? Your comparison is what does not make sense. You are taking your use case, which does not apply to 90% of the self-brew cases. Literally the definition of a strawman. I personally think cars are a bad invention, and I don't see the use. I live across the street from work, and once a week take a lyft. Why are all these people driving?? I just can't figure it out. Now, here's what I do actually do. I have Kona green cherry and Peaberry light roast. I take a cup of green and grind it fine in my conical grinder. I double-filter tap water, boil it, then filter it again the next day once cool. I use that to boil the green for about 10min in a large steel pot. I drink half of that mixed with fairlife fat free milk. Good for 1st drink of the morning. While that's going on, I grind 2 cups of peaberry, and dump it into the pot, adding a lot more boiling water. Boil for 2 minutes, let sit for 10. Now it's mixed light roast peaberry and green, for that lightly charred lawnmowerbag taste. It's naturally quite sweet, but sometimes I'll add a splenda. I spend more than an hour per day on coffee. The process is relaxing. When I'm at work running from one meeting to the next, I pop in a cup with some weird flavor and go on my way. If I had to do what you do, I wouldn't do it at all. That's the price of your 6-7 minutes - a barrier to entry that's just too damn high.

jchanimal 8y ago

For a second I thought you lived in my world, where it’s the car that takes so much longer.

EpicEng 8y ago
Nope, I live in the world that most other people do (in the US).
- keithpeter 8y ago
  I outwalked a traffic jam this morning as I often do (admittedly in a narrow time frame)
  - EpicEng 8y ago
    Well it would take me an hour to ride my bike to work, but I get here in ~11 minutes in my car. True for most people in the US. And as I wrote that last bit, I realized that I should not have said "in the _world_".
    - PascLeRasc 8y ago
      I have the opposite during warm weather. I have a 12-15 minute bike commute that takes 45 minutes by car and an hour by bus. I'm sure that's not the case if you don't have decent bike infrastructure though.
    - emj 8y ago
      Yes but that is an issue with your choices, which makes sense we all want convenience, but you could make those choices from a bicycle perspective. I did, atm I get about 10 minutes extra every day because actualy do something with my commute. This is true for every place I've lived in (Europe, NA/SA and Asia), you just have to make the choice.
  - rosser 8y ago
    And I out-walked (well, tied) the Uber driver who cut me off at a crosswalk, to dropping off his fare across the street from my apartment a few blocks further up the hill, the other night. Contextually constrained anecdata like ours simply aren't relevant to the general point here. For the vast majority of people in the parts of the world where using pod coffee machines is a meaningful thing to talk about, your commute is a driving or transit kind of thing, not walking or biking.