Shelves full of the fucking stuff in the supermarket, but they all taste the same.
“Oh no, I grind my own beans”. You can literally buy it ground already, what’s wrong with you? Coffee grinders can be used for one thing and one thing only, how ridiculous it is to own your own one?
“What strength shall I get?” doesn’t matter, all the same.
“I prefer the coffee at my local place where they use the tears of joy of their employees”, no you don’t, you just prefer the ambience of their venue and the feeling of exclusivity you get.
Ordered £25 worth of beans this morning. Four different blends, each of which I will prepare by Aeropress or v60 depending on which method best suits them.
I broadly agree and I have worked as a barista for years. It’s all smoke and mirrors, the only thing you should care about is fairness in the supply chain and trying to make sure your end product exploits as few people as possible. Some people can make really nice coffee with shit beans, some people can take insane Geisha coffees and render them undrinkable. It’s all balls, just do what you like.
As part of my recent coffee journey I am now a regular user of a “keep-cup” and use it to get a “latte” from “Four Five Ate” on Saturday and Sunday mornings.
I broadly agree with your OP of course, however, I can tell the difference between coffee from coffee machine one and coffee from coffee machine two at work despite the same beans being in both.
There is very bad coffee and very good coffee, but what i will say is you can get instant coffee that tastes as good as fancy coffee that’s three or four times as expensive.
I buy some swanky coffees, but then i regularly give people Nescafé Alta Rica and tell them it’s the good stuff and literally not one person has ever noticed.
How much energy and resources are we wasting by all insisting to own separate devices in order to do something that can be achieved far more efficiently on a centralised basis?
We should all be attending publicly owned food halls for all food and drink consumption.
While I disagree that they all taste the same - they don’t - my AirB&B in France the other week had packets of instant cappuccino that was very nearly as good as the real thing.