I am thankful for having a dulled sense of taste because I like cheap coffee and have found my satisfactory level of flavor from a very basic level of effort. This amount of concern over all the factors of brewing a cup of a hot flavored beverage feels to be on the level of sound quality goals for audiophiles, purchasing ever-increasingly expensive accessories.
Well, there are two sides to being into something. One of course is the "hedonistic treadmill" of not being able to put up with "bad" coffee/audio any longer but the other side of it is that you can come to really enjoy something that is small and specific and wholly within your own power and ingenuity.
I think the nature of internet forums (and this particularly applies to audiophile ones) is that they can bring out the most neurotic personally traits - people complaining and making nonsense, unverifiable claims. But there is also the silent majority of people who are thrilled to be able listen to some recording of classical music without having to go to a concert hall (assuming their local orchestra are playing whatever it is).
Also - I don't use a v60 coffee maker so perhaps I don't know but I was under the impression that it's actually a very approachable way to make coffee at home and not that expensive an accessory. (I am on Team Moka Pot, and those really are cheap and easy to operate :))
Yes. A V60 dripper is £6 and the filter papers are about 6p each.
It's the coffee that's expensive. That soon leads into getting a good grinder so you don't end up with expensive stale grinds (whole beans stay fresh longer).
The most expensive coffee making gadget in my house (and I’m not going to count them) is the standard drip machine which most people have (around here). The other stuff (e.g moka, french press, aeropress) which coffee enthusiasts prefer, are way cheaper.
You can also buy "crappy" coffee and make it taste better just by dialing in how you make it. Watch a couple youtube videos, spend about an hour and a half practicing making cup after cup of coffee, and you can make pre-ground Folgers taste pleasant.
Most people aren't aware that they can practice cooking many times in a row and get noticeably better in a day. You can't make 25 roast dinners in a row, but you can make 25 omelettes, or 25 cups of coffee, and dramatically increase your proficiency. If you only practiced once a day, you would actually not get much better, and it would still take you 25 times as long.
The audiophile analogy is valid, but only because you can be an audiophile chasing brand names or status (and you will probably get it if you spend enough), or you can be an audiophile that seeks out high quality gear without the snake oil.
Same with coffee makers. I would consider myself a coffee snob but I've ditched all the fancy gear and use a $12 pour over device from OXO. That and a basic water kettle will get you world-class coffee for less than the cost of a basic Mr. Coffee unit.
It's not the hardware that make it expensive, its the beans. Really good coffee is expensive. There are gems at cheaper price points, but its hard to find, and they're usually temporary.
It's the hardware. You can pick up 1kg single source raw beans for anywhere between $8-$20 USD depending on your interests. Roasted, these will taste better than anything you'll buy in a store and will almost as good -> better than mail order specialty roasts.
However, a good roaster costs $400-$1K+, a good grinder costs $200+, and a good (used) espresso maker costs another $200-$400. All of these amounts can escalate very quickly.
An acceptable roaster costs $20 (air popper), acceptable grinder $30 (hario or equiv), and a good espresso maker costs $30 (aeropress). And a good set of headphones costs $50 (ATH m20x)
I spend far more on beans annually than I have on hardware in the past 5 years. I have zero interest in chasing more expensive hardware for a fix. But I did actually upgrade my headphones to Sennheiser hd599 when the aux cable in my old pair broke.
> But I did actually upgrade my headphones to Sennheiser hd599 when the aux cable in my old pair broke.
Having had a few pairs go like that and the hatred I have for the tinny weeny sub-hair micron strands of wire they have and fixing them. I always go for headphones with a socket connection or if hard-wired, have a second output jack that you can use to share with a friend who can plug in - as the way those are wired, you can just plug a male to male cable in and use that as the headphone input.
As for Bluetooth headphones, I go for ones which can also accept a hard-wired connection, so at least it prolongs their life if replacing the battery proves an effort beyond the scope of my elephant-hands.
Thinking of adding an aux jack to my old sennheiser 201s, as they work fine otherwise. the reason I got the hd599 is because they had a removable cable, haha
I bought headphones two steps up ATH m40x and although the sound was good it was the most uncomfortable pair of headphones I have ever worn couldn't wear them for 10 seconds and owned them for 5 minutes.
I'll be honest, the ATH m40x was just a google result for best headphones under $50. Comfort is very important (and completely orthogal to price)
I used sennheiser HD201s ($15 canadian on sale) for years until the cable broke, then upgraded to sennheiser HD599 ($149 canadian, on sale) because it has replaceable cable. Might add an aux jack to the old ones, sometime...
It came so strongly to memory because I read a million reviews and bought it in part because it was described as comfortable for long wear but it felt a device designed to torture your head.
I ended up with bose QC25 which can be found used for $50-90 because it sounds good, is comfortable to wear, has a replaceable cable, replacable ear cups, and although it uses a battery for noise cancelation its a plane jane nimh rechargable aaa battery sold all over creation. Also the battery running down just means noise cancellation stops working not sound.
I find it amusing that the headphones people are upgrading to in the same product line are exclusively bluetooth meaning more hassle connecting, lower quality sound depending on phone and codec supported, aren't able to produce sound at all if the battery runs down and to add insult to injury the battery is built in and hard to replace. It's one more thing you need to constantly remember to keep charged up so it doesn't die when you need it with a hard to replace part that is going to go bad far sooner than the device gives out. Ifixit rates it hard and says it takes at least 45 minutes and a $30 part even if you have all the tools.
A hot-air popcorn machine is suitable for small batch roasting if you can do it outdoor (there's too much chaff and smoke if you do it indoor). My popcorn machine doesn't get hot enough when the outdoor temperature is under 15°C, so roasting beans is a summer thing that I look forward to.
I cook fish which is much worse for my co-tenants than coffee smoke. Kitchens make all sorts of smells, but it's fine as it's temporary. The chaff is quickly wiped away if the counter is reasonably clear. If the counter is a cluttered mess, you can always roast on the dinner table instead (hopefully you guys keep that one clear).
Are consumers roasting their own coffee? Also, a good handgrinder is less than £50 and a V60 with filter papers will only be £10. Pourover coffee can be just as good as espresso, it's just different.
A decent one maybe, a good one, just like the original comment mentioned starts at around 200$/Eu. Would recommend in the cheap category a Polrex, I stared with one of those and use now for travelling, it's quite a solid grider for the prices and it has decent results.
A $200 coffee grinder is just a throughput optimization. If you take away the $170 motor and use your hand instead, you can get a great grind.
It's a pain in the ass to hand-grind coffee every morning, and I wouldn't have the ability to do it before coffee, but... if you don't have hundreds of dollars, don't let that stop you from having a great cup of coffee.
I happily used a blade grinder for years before I upgraded. As others mentioned, you can get into this hobby without spending a lot of money (my current grinder is a commercial unit I bought used for way less than $170).
However, as long as you have an oven (and don't live in the immediate vicinity of a local roaster), you'll find that the DIY roasting route gives you 90-110% of the benefit that you get from buying online boutique roasts for store bought prices.
And let's be honest, this is one of those hobbies (like drones, 3d printers, or photography) where you'll eventually find yourself wanting more than a french press and hand grinder.
I was speaking more of the former, through the restless pursuit of a perfect experience, feeling that contentment is akin to (temporary) settling. My setup is using one of those cheap plastic Melitta pour-overs with the paper liners, which has provided me the most consistent, cost-effective, easy-to-use methods of getting the flavor I like.
Mine was 800€. To pay this, you need to be a coffee nerd, but I think it is absolutely the most important thing to get consistency and satisfaction. I use an inherited antique ceramique (no plastique) pour over filter and do not feel it has any drawbacks.
Hand grinders are quite nice return of investment, for the same quality of grind you can pay a lot less, because there is no engine etc. Also hand grinders have much less of a problem with retention.
I use a Rancilio MD 80 that I picked up for 80CHF. The guy I bought it from didn't know what he had. It's as large as my Gaggia, but grind retention be damned, I'm not giving it up.
To further explain, residual coffee goes stale, the oil in the coffee beans can go rancid and thus spoil your cup and if the retention varies you might miss your ratio or go overboard.
This is in practice at most annoying, so you can indeed make good coffee without a zero retention grinder but for a 'coffee snob' the most important thing is consistency in the cup.
This. I use an AeroPress. The most expensive cup of coffee in the world is made with an AeroPress. You just need the unit and hot water to make an unbelievable cup of coffee. It costs $29 and a travel version even includes a cup, scoop and Stir for your $30. You absolutely do not need to spend a fortune to get amazing coffee.
The audiophile analogy is not a terrible one, particularly given there's "sensible" snake-oil-avoiding audiophiles out there, but there's still a few important differences that make coffee quite different:
1. The expensive accessories thing is actually a bit of a myth.
Espresso is expensive: a good home machine will set you back well over 500 $/€ and can go up into the thousands, and an accompanying grinder is about the same price range again. You can pay over 100 just for a tamper.
But, coffee snobs are typically not into espresso. The two biggest areas of "audiophile-esque" dedication are pourover (v60 funnel ~€4.50) and the infamous International Aeropress Championships (retailing ~€35). Filter-grade grinders are also much cheaper than Espresso, going in the ~€200-€500 range for electric, but most dedicated aficionados prefer manual grinders which retail as low as €25 for a decent quality one.
A part of the above differences is that coffee snobs are into the more direct & involved (slow) process of making
The bigger cost to coffee snobs is beans, retailing usually around triple to quadruple the price of major brands. I guess this could be likened to buying vinyl... ? Though the audiophile community still disagree on whether vinyl is worthwhile.
2. It's not all about taste
Major brand coffee is sold at well below reasonable cost of production. Coffee snobs are buying Direct Trade coffee, which is typically much more sustainable and equitable, even when compared to many of the mass-produced "Fairtrade-labelled" brands. While buying expensive beans will hit your pocket much more severely than the equipment costs, it is at least going toward something.
This could I guess be likened to audiophiles supporting artists by buying albums etc. but I'm not sure if that's generally true of audiophiles specifically (e.g. compared to serial concert-goers)
I would say though that there are a few more considerations to keep in mind relative to the "audiophile" analogy.
- pourovers take a ton of time and effort, but an Aeropress is really fast. I think I spend maybe about a net time investment of 45 seconds (15 seconds to start the kettle/hit the grind button, 15 seconds to set it up, 15 seconds to make the coffee) between which phases I can do other stuff, like work, or, more likely, hacker news. Of course, this is WAY less time than going to a starbucks.
- even the more expensive beans are still on the order of 5x cheaper than the cheapest starbucks.
Like jldl805, I like my coffee too but my only investments are a £10 spice grinder and a Bialetti moka pot for hot coffee, and a muslin bag and a pitcher for cold brew using this[1] technique.
I’ve been using a muslin/“nut milk” bag for years. I’ll grind a pound of coffee and let it steep for a couple of days in roughly a gallon of water, then pour it into a dispenser that I can leave in the refrigerator.
I’m no coffee snob but to me the flavor keeps extremely well.
The only thing I found is that even the finest mesh bag leaves a considerable amount of grit so I pour that through a paper filter. Hard to beat fantastic coffee at the turn of a spigot.
For your filter issue, toddy makes disposable paper filter bags that are great. You just brew in them instead of a nut milk bag. There's virtually no grit.
Is your spice grinder a blade grinder? If so you are likely getting a very inconsistent grind. This may affect the taste of the coffee dramatically.
The first recommendation I give to people that want to get into brewing better tasting coffee is to get a burr grinder, even a handheld one will do just fine. With a burr grinder you just get a more consistent grind which helps reduce the fines thereby reducing the bitterness.
> The first recommendation I give to people that want to get into brewing better tasting coffee is to get a burr grinder, even a handheld one will do just fine. With a burr grinder you just get a more consistent grind which helps reduce the fines thereby reducing the bitterness.
I second this, but do get one with a metal burr like a Timemore, and not the oft-recommended Hario Skerton, which has a ceramic burr.
The manual grinding experience with a metal burr grinder is so much better.
You can absolutely take it to audiophile level but doing something simple like grinding the beans before brewing instead of using pre-ground makes a huge difference. It's like using trash dollar store earbuds vs. a decent pair of headphones. Little bit of effort, huge improvement.
That, plus finding beans that were roasted in the last couple of weeks instead of having a "best used by" date that is twelve months out. I wish every roaster would switch to a "roasted on" date instead, but the ones that do are doing it right.
Beans produced for supermarkets or chains use the “best before” because it is a relatively long time. The beans might not taste their best but they are safe to use.
This is often a requirement of grocery stores where they intend to sell it, who don’t want to have stock that isn’t salable after two weeks (it can take the big groceries longer than that to just distribute it to their stores).
In my experience, grocery stores want a best by, not a roast date, so even good roasters will sometimes use a different label when selling through a store vs direct. In one case, I learned the best by date they use is just roast date + 1y.
My local Target has started carrying high(er) end coffee beans — Stumptown, Peets, Blue Bottle, Counter Culture, etc. Interestingly, these bags DO show a roasted date on them. When I eyeballed it, they were all about 5-6 weeks prior, so not straight from the roaster but not horribly old either.
You and me both. I like to joke that I really just love coffee more than everyone else, because I like it equally in all of its forms instead of chasing meticulous preparations.
In that case you may enjoy this video from James Hoffman (who is considered one of the most coffee of coffee snobs) on drinking "bad" coffee: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=tU1y7hBSgiY
Coffee is a bit like high end alcohol. There's a world of really amazing experiences out there if you're willing to put in the money and time, and cut through marketing BS.
... but if you're perfectly happy with dewars white label and bud light, I'd recommend never losing that and finding another perfectly good hobby =).
In fairness coffee is an amazingly cheap hobby compared to others. The difference between high end and low end in coffee (lets say 1 percentile to 98 percentile) is probably only about 5X. i.e. the worst coffee you'll buy is probably $6/ lb and the most expensive is approx $34/lb. So you can go hog wild for $34 per week or 2 weeks...
I’m not super picky myself, but coffee is an incredibly fun hobby. There is a ton of equipment to try and endless varieties of beans. A lot of it is easy entry too, you can even roast your own beans with fairly simple equipment.
I'm in a similar yet different boat. I have a heightened sense of taste, but I have relatively terrible taste. I drink it all, black, no sugar. The thicker the better. My preferred brewing method is the one that gets it into my cup quickest.
Same here but perhaps to an even more pond-scum drinking level: instant coffee.
I found one I like (Mount Hagen), it tastes better to me than most exotic coffees my coworkers rave about, and that's it. Cheap, easy to make, taste like coffee.
Now take your hobby, and have someone say "Glad my senses are too dull to care about this".
"I'm glad I have a 5800X so I don't have to care about well-performing code".
Lots of people drink coffee. Many enjoy the taste of good coffee. Some people enjoy brewing the finest coffee as a hobby, just as someone else likes making wooden furniture, writing elegant algorithms, or painting.
I don’t think I have any hobby that I enjoy that doesn’t also carry with it a healthy measure of embarrassment about liking it so much, so it would not offend me if others told me how much less they care about it. That’s the nature of hobbies. I like coffee, but I do not share the perspective that I have to relentlessly pursue a perfect cup. I believe that those who seem unfulfilled with their current batch are seeking diminishing returns on enjoyment — as if they will be eternally unhappy, worried that there might be a better version of their drink out there, still undiscovered. My comment was not to diminish the relevance of having a hobby but rather referencing the unhealthy mindset of those who become addicted to the pursuit of something I think one might never feel can be reached.
I think being honest about what is/isn't a hobby is necessary too, especially for ones that require a lot of equipment.
E.g. watches. There's a lot of places on the Internet to discuss watches, and people that think being "into watches" is a thing. But all you're actually doing 95% of the time is buying watches and discussing what watches one buys. People can get very neurotic over this and develop weird tribal sentiments around it. I've seen this derisively (but also appropriately) coined as "bugmen" behavior. Same idea with craft beer. It's just consumerism in disguise.
Notice I don't mention watchmaking/homebrewing; those are legitimate hobbies.
That is a really interesting distinction. I have had a couple hobbies that ended up being “buy all the things as if you were going to do this hobby” more than actually enjoying the hobby, and they were spectacularly unfulfilling in the end. More like chasing some consumerist ideal than anything else, for sure.
