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I worked as a barista for years, including Costa, Caffe Nero, and high end independent coffee shops that get mentioned in guidebooks. What do I drink today? 'Ba
by rcarr 4y ago
I worked as a barista for years, including Costa, Caffe Nero, and high end independent coffee shops that get mentioned in guidebooks. What do I drink today? 'Barista style' fine ground instant coffee from Lidl.
I also worked in a ton of bars. Ask any good cocktail bartender what their drink of choice is and nine times out of ten they'll say a bottle of beer.
If you've had to spend a good chunk of your life fannying around with this marlarkey to make a living, more often than not you want nothing to do with it. Is it better than the instant coffee? Yeah. Is it worth the money, maintenance and hassle? Probably not unless you're loaded. If ever there was an indicator of a privileged existence, fucking about with coffee is it.
Yes, I know I need to stop being grumpy. I'm trying to work on it.
- deterministic 4y agoI love coffee and I have found a few places in my city that makes coffee I love. So I stick to those places and it really makes my day. Bad coffee makes me cranky! And instant coffee even worse! However if instant coffee works for you then great! :)
- rcarr 4y agoI still drink the good stuff outside the house, I just don’t mess about with it myself at home.
- jna_sh 4y agoI think this is a common sentiment. Prolific coffee YouTuber, roastery-owner, and former World Barista Championship winner James Hoffman doesn’t do espresso at home, and says something to the effect of “home espresso is a hobby, not a way producing coffee”.
- Gigachad 4y agoThe guy undoubtably knows how to make coffee. But this is a silly opinion. I’ve got several methods of making coffee at home and the espresso machine is the cheapest, easiest, and best tasting result.
- 0-_-0 4y agoWhat is the 2nd cheapest, and what is the most expensive? And where is the aeropress in the ranking?
- Gigachad 4y agoI've got the aeropress for something portable. Its good, it's nice, it's not as nice as an espresso but it a fraction of the cost and doesn't take up your kitchen counter space. Most expensive without getting in to stupid hipster stuff is just a high end espresso machine, perhaps a commercial one. But the Brevile/Sage barista express is cheap and very good.
- atombender 4y agoHowever, Hoffmann does not think very highly instant coffee, to say the least: https://youtu.be/8cIqLvJz8VM https://youtu.be/8cIqLvJz8VM.
- chrispeel 4y agoThat's a video about supermarket instant. He has better things to say about specialty instant: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuLWwZiIcl0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WuLWwZiIcl0
- toasteros 4y agoI'm not loaded, but I screw with coffee just enough to not have to drink instant. Besides the fact that instant (mostly nescafe) doesn't taste very good to me, it makes me poop liquid. Consistently. I don't know what it is - because coffee makes us poop anyway - but nescafe eliminates a lot of solids in my stool. I have a pretty basic set up - cheap scales so I know how many beans I'm grinding, a Mr Coffee, and a Krups electric burr grinder. The results are Pretty Good To Me(TM) and my partner - who is not crazy about coffee, but likes what I can make for her. When I want to get fancy I have a pourover that is handy for making iced coffee or some better extracted coffee than the Mr Coffee can handle. I compare it to baking. We can easily buy a tray of Mr Kiplings or jam doughnuts from Asda, but we can also if we want to, get some flour and sugar and all that crazy baking stuff and have a crack at it ourselves. Some people go so far as to do that exclusively.
- rcarr 4y agoFair enough mate, just don't become a hipster Patrick Bateman buying a £2k grinder to fill the void
- chihuahua 4y agoA friend of mine once said "everyone needs something to fill their empty shell of an existence", and that seems to explain a lot of things people do that otherwise don't make any sense.
- tptacek 4y agoThat has not been my experience asking cocktail bartenders what their drink of choice is.
- kasey_junk 4y agoOGD with a highlife back is a fairly popular choice in my experience…
- tptacek 4y agoOGD was going to be my bet too.
- LBJsPNS 4y agoOesophago-Gastro-Duodenoscopy?
- kasey_junk 4y agoOld Grand Dad (usually the bottled in bond expression if no other note is applied). Right now the pound for pound winner in quality to price ratio in American bourbon.
- LBJsPNS 4y agoLet me humbly suggest Rebel Yell.
- kasey_junk 4y agoRebel lost its age statement snd doesn’t have a bib expression so it gets marked down. I like it and would happily drink it though I’m not a wheated guy.
- Tao3300 4y agoI'd say Wild Turkey 101 wins that by a nose. Or a beak. Nothing wrong with OGD though.
- joshlemer 4y agoI agree that coffee prep is over-fetishized, but going to instant coffee seems extreme. At least to me, it's pretty disgusting. But spend like $800-$1600 on a nice grinder and espresso machine that lasts a decade or more, buy whatever brand of beans they have this week at Costco, and you can have really nice coffee without any futzing or making a deal of it.
- r00fus 4y agoThere is a vast gulf between instant coffee and your proposed setup. An aeropress and a medium-end grinder would be < $100.
- slothtrop 4y agoThe wife recently got some instant "espresso"-type instant coffee, and I was amazed at how inoffensive it tasted. Would never swap my whole beans for it given the choice, but it was drinkable. Methinks some progress may have been made.
- Herodotus38 4y agoWas it the gold medallion brand with the green lid? That is my wife and I’s favorite.
- slothtrop 4y agoI don't think so but I'll look out for it. Might have been Nescafe Gold.
- Herodotus38 4y agoI found the one we like: Medaglia d’oro. It sounds fancy but it’s pretty common and minimally more expensive than basic instant coffee. A couple years ago I tried a taste test of many and we liked that one the best.
- 4y ago
- Aloha 4y agoI mentioned in a parallel post, I drink perc'd store purchased mass market coffee most of the time. My backup? instant.
- kobalsky 4y agothere's a spanish saying, "En casa de herrero, cuchillo de palo", which translates to "In the blacksmith's home, wooden knife".
- TedDoesntTalk 4y agoIn English we have, “The cobbler’s children go barefoot.”
- jason-phillips 4y agoBut you never trust a skinny chef
- rswail 4y ago"A builder's house is never finished"
- wyre 4y agoNo, the skinny chefs are too busy cooking for other people.
- PartiallyTyped 4y agoI think you should? The “I don’t swallow what I don’t like” kind of chefs must be excellent.
- Galacta7 4y agoAlso the saying, "The baker's children are the last to have bread."
- pessimizer 4y agoAn way to link it to class (and $1000 coffee setups) is to mention the weavers of Mosi ramie fabric in Korea, who traditionally do not own any items made from Mosi because there's no way that they could afford them. The fabric was/is reserved exclusively for the wealthy and the royal. https://ich.unesco.org/en/RL/weaving-of-mosi-fine-ramie-in-the-hansan-region-00453 https://ich.unesco.org/en/RL/weaving-of-mosi-fine-ramie-in-t... edit: one of the phases of weaving the fabric involves softening the fibers with their saliva. Saw it on a Korean reality show.
- strken 4y agoI drink whatever the local barista pulls. The value I get from coffee is in the five minute walk and the minor social interaction. We've got an espresso machine at home, but ending up with a physical cup of coffee is the least important part of buying one. When my mother was younger and coffee was first entering mainstream Australian culture, she claims cafes used to serve instant coffee. When I was younger I used to think this was an abomination, but now I totally understand.
- roflyear 4y agoIDK I can buy excellent specialty coffee for like $11 for 300g (15-20 cups of coffee) + shipping. How does that qualify as privileged? (I am absolutely privileged I just don't think this counts).
- john61 4y agoIt is the same for me in software as a software engineer. My life is getting more and more analogue and offline.
- quickthrower2 4y agoI think pod machines can make a pretty nice coffee for the convince / taste trade-off. Refillable pods would make it environmentally tolerable.
- asplake 4y agoNow you’ve got me curious! Is that a recommendation for Lidl or just the one you find convenient?
- rcarr 4y agoNot particularly, I just normally do my food shop at Lidl and it's both cheaper and nicer than the Nescafe equivalent at the local Co-Op. As far as black coffee goes, nothing beats filter but I can't be arsed with the hassle nowadays so I just buy instant. If I want a nice coffee, I'll go to a proper coffee shop to get one. Also, if I'm out of the house and buying coffee from somewhere that isn't a coffee shop but does have an espresso machine, I'll almost always buy a latte. 9 out of 10 of these places aren't dialling in their grind and get away with it (for the average consumer at least) because the milk will to some extent mask out the resulting shit espresso. You notice it way more if you drink an Americano and sometimes it's bordering on undrinkable so I always just buy a milky coffee from these places instead.
- xoxxala 4y agoMy wife has been a Starbucks barista for 17 years. She uses a K-cup machine at home. We had the fancy stuff but she doesn’t want to deal with that outside of work.
- itchynosedev 4y agoOn a scale where one extreme is buying a refractometer to optimize every last aspect of coffee making, and the other end is instant coffee from Lidl, there is a wide range in the middle. V60, Aeropress (only one needed, but I like both for some variety), a decent hand grinder, and good beans is hardly that much money (amortized over years of use, or "cost per wear"), let alone maintenance. I bought these around 10 years ago (well, v60 twice, I broke it, and I like it ceramic, and I have to buy beans every few weeks), and they are still going strong. The process takes about 5 minutes total time, including brewing. I would never replace it with an instant coffee, I would rather stop drinking coffee altogether. It does make traveling a bit tricky, as I refuse to carry additional gear around, and don't always have access to good coffee places. I have to admit, in the beginning, I was looking for the holy grail setup like with other hobbies, but luckily, was not wealthy enough to sink a ton of money into it.
- satvikpendem 4y agoSame here, it's the Pareto principle in action. I even run a Chemex filter under a basic Mr. Coffee which works great since most of the benefit of a Chemex is its filters.
- bradgessler 4y agov60 is a really great middle ground. If I’m traveling and the coffee is garbage I’ll happily drink tea. What do you do for beans? I got tired of paying $20-$30/lb for decent stuff so I roast my own. Costs $6-$10/lb for beans from Sweet Maria’s, which me and my wife go through in about a week.
- walthamstow 4y agoA wonderfully British comment. Grumpiness, malarkey, Costa Coffee, Lidl, fannying around. It's got it all.
- rcarr 4y agoThis actually made me laugh out loud. Glad you enjoyed it.
- falsenapkin 4y ago> If ever there was an indicator of a privileged existence, fucking about with coffee is it. I don't disagree but this is a little harsh for what can be a relatively cheap hobby and a great way to support local businesses. If someone is a coffee drinker anyway, has a spare 5 minutes, and can stomach like $100 entry cost and higher cost beans then do we need to knock them down for it? Sure people can go overboard and that's pretty gross, especially when the production side of things is not getting the same level of attention.
- osigurdson 4y ago>> do we need to knock them down for it? No, allow people to do what they want without judgement - even if it seems dumb. Focus attention on people that are legitimately causing harm.
- nidnogg 4y agoI think there's a sizeable difference between a $100 grinder + press/moka or whatever and a $700~$1000ish kit for espresso people are touting here as "fun, cheap way to learn".
- damascus 4y agoThis is hacker news though. The average audience member is almost certainly gainfully employed. Spending $1k on a lifelong hobby/daily routine is incredibly cheap in almost all regards except one upfront cost.