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Absolutely this, but I cannot blame the OP, as you can tell this is another US biased coffee making & consuming experience. The best these people may have tried

Absolutely this, but I cannot blame the OP, as you can tell this is another US biased coffee making & consuming experience. The best these people may have tried, and failed to ever reach and enjoy the true quality, having - indeed - some complexity behind it, is in visiting Starbucks. On the other hand - if you visit a serious place in Europe (recommend Italy, or France), for example, try a true expresso, made with a true machine, with proper grains ground to the proper size and all other necessary conditions (water, temperature, etc.), then you'd ask yourself how you could have ever considered coffee anything else than a worthy experience, like the French cuisine. Then you save and invest into a proper machine and grinder, and forget the Mr. Coffee monstrosity having ever inflicted your senses. Even without the investment in a high end machine, an expresso setup in the price ranges above, with Yirgacheffe grains freshly ground, brings the joy of a coffee to a "place" that a morning with such gives the rest of the day another level of "joie de vivre" Same with "complex" software ...

ativzzz 4y ago
unfortunately espresso lasts all of 30 seconds and while it tastes great, i make coffee while working to last longer and "keep me company" for some amount of time - espresso simply doesn't do that
Mixtape 4y ago
> The best these people may have tried, and failed to ever reach and enjoy the true quality, having - indeed - some complexity behind it, is in visiting Starbucks. This is a tangent from OPs point, but I would push back on this idea slightly. To be clear, there is absolutely a large number of people in the US who use coffee as a tool more than an experience and treat it as such. A frightening majority will shell out a few bucks on the daily for coffee from gas stations or chain restaurants, all of which will serve you the sort of over sweetened, watered-down coffee experience you'd expect in the US. However, I'm of the belief that there are undercurrents of a strong coffee culture in the states as long as you're willing to look for it. I recently took a trip along the east coast and, while searching for souvenirs, found a bag of locally roasted beans that I decided to take home. They weren't necessarily my favorite roast that I've tried, but the fact of the matter was that I was able to taste a local cultural staple and identify what made it unique for relatively low effort. Likewise, there are a growing number of locally owned and run coffee shops popping up across the country using machines similar to those you described above (my local favorite uses a Slayer [1]). The Starbucks-ification of coffee and inflation have unfortunately normalized $5 16oz house blends at many of these places, but the experience is still far more authentic and feels like a deliberate choice rather than a passive act. I apologize in advance for taking a "not all Americans" stance on this, but coffee is something that I'm genuinely passionate about despite living somewhere that tries not to be. I want other people who care to share these experiences too, but many just assume that every stateside coffee shop is the same. Hopefully this will help illuminate some other options. [1] https://slayerespresso.com/ https://slayerespresso.com/
dagw 4y ago
US biased coffee making & consuming experience. Just about every US city I've been to is overflowing with 'serious' coffer places making 'true' espresso which can easily hold their own against every place I've been to in France and Italy.

ativzzz 4y ago

unfortunately espresso lasts all of 30 seconds and while it tastes great, i make coffee while working to last longer and "keep me company" for some amount of time - espresso simply doesn't do that

Mixtape 4y ago

> The best these people may have tried, and failed to ever reach and enjoy the true quality, having - indeed - some complexity behind it, is in visiting Starbucks. This is a tangent from OPs point, but I would push back on this idea slightly. To be clear, there is absolutely a large number of people in the US who use coffee as a tool more than an experience and treat it as such. A frightening majority will shell out a few bucks on the daily for coffee from gas stations or chain restaurants, all of which will serve you the sort of over sweetened, watered-down coffee experience you'd expect in the US. However, I'm of the belief that there are undercurrents of a strong coffee culture in the states as long as you're willing to look for it. I recently took a trip along the east coast and, while searching for souvenirs, found a bag of locally roasted beans that I decided to take home. They weren't necessarily my favorite roast that I've tried, but the fact of the matter was that I was able to taste a local cultural staple and identify what made it unique for relatively low effort. Likewise, there are a growing number of locally owned and run coffee shops popping up across the country using machines similar to those you described above (my local favorite uses a Slayer [1]). The Starbucks-ification of coffee and inflation have unfortunately normalized $5 16oz house blends at many of these places, but the experience is still far more authentic and feels like a deliberate choice rather than a passive act. I apologize in advance for taking a "not all Americans" stance on this, but coffee is something that I'm genuinely passionate about despite living somewhere that tries not to be. I want other people who care to share these experiences too, but many just assume that every stateside coffee shop is the same. Hopefully this will help illuminate some other options. [1] https://slayerespresso.com/ https://slayerespresso.com/

dagw 4y ago

US biased coffee making & consuming experience. Just about every US city I've been to is overflowing with 'serious' coffer places making 'true' espresso which can easily hold their own against every place I've been to in France and Italy.