Hacker News Reader

Comment by pfooti | Hacker News Reader

The important question is: is it good? I typically spend around $25 / pound on coffee beans, which is a fairly large amount of money. But: the beans I buy are very freshly roasted right near where I live and make excellent coffee (which I make by the cup, pour-over style), and I only drink a cup or two a day.

I'd see my way to paying more if the beans were somehow qualitatively better - I had some $50 / lb coffee once that was totally worth it (I hate to use the word mouthfeel, but this coffee really legit had a velvety rich mouthfeel that I'd never experienced in a cup of coffee before or since, and a great aroma and flavor to go with it), and I've tried other coffees that were high up on the expense level that were totally not worth it. Most probably aren't worth it.

So: how does it compare? Is the ridiculous price just because you're from california? No thanks, I'll take my ethiopian amaro gayo, tyvm.

View on HN

Alrighty then. You pay $25 for freshly ground coffee roasted right near where you live. And you only drink a cup or two a day. Let's call that 1.5 cups a day. A pound will provide 48 6 oz cups which will last you 48/1.5 = 1 month.

So it doesn't matter that your coffee was roasted very near where you live since on average it's two weeks old.

Me, I live in Oakland and I like a local roaster McLaughlin in Emeryville. I can get beans or ground from Farmer Joes, also local. But I don't overvalue locality to the extreme. I buy McLaughlin because I like the taste and for what it's worth, I buy ground not bean.

I buy coffee by the half-pound, fwiw. Each cup uses around ... well, exactly 25g of beans. Which gives me about 9 cups per bag, which I go through in about a week. The last cup is usually the one where the coffee isn't blooming anymore when I pour hot water on it.

But there are certainly people who enjoy all different kinds of coffee. I'm not one to tell them what to do.

He didn't say he buys it by the pound; 6 oz bags are common.

Did they say they bought a pound at a time? The coffee I but is also sold as $n per pound, but it's sold bulk, and I buy about ⅓ pound at a time, since that will last me a week or so.

He didn't say he buys a pound at a time, just that it's priced $25/lb. Nor that his "cup" (colloquially) was 6 oz in size, though for some reason coffee machines do seem to define their "cups" as 5 oz, coffee prep directions are always related to 6 oz., and the American unit of measurement is 1 cup / 8 fluid oz. (I assume we're discussing America here, because everyone else measures out their coffee in grams).

Using my mug - which I describe as my morning cup of coffee/tea - of 12 oz., buying a half-pound at a time, the "average" age of the coffee is now a couple of days.

If the entire strength of your argument goes away on the basis of tweaking a couple of variables by reasonable degrees, you should probably reconsider the argument.

> So it doesn't matter that your coffee was roasted very near where you live since on average it's two weeks old.

"Time since roast" is hardly the only reason to prefer locally roasted beans. Actually, it's not a good reason at all, since you can ship roasted beans across the country a few times before they're ready to be ground and brewed.

Some folks just like to support their neighbors, and buying from local roasters could also mean fewer shipping miles (and less carbon emissions) attached to that that bag of beans.

As far as this 'support your neighbors' culture goes: it's an interesting thing to me because at a national level the politically correct response becomes the opposite (support free trade), and it also turns into a very inflammatory and controversial issue--likely because of nationalism. Even more interesting, it appears liberals and conservatives switch sides when going from local to national framework, i.e. liberals tend to support local, but not support protectionism, while conservatives appear the opposite.

I buy shirts that are made in San Francisco, but the fabric is almost certainly not made in the U.S. The global supply chain enables products that are in some sense "made locally". Same goes for coffee. So it's totally reasonable to be against protectionism and for buying "locally".

It can be something as simple as being able to talk to the roaster. I have a few good sources of coffee I use, but I prefer the local roaster. I do so because we can engage and he'll recommend a new coffee because he knows it's a match to my preferences. He is a former WBC contenter and have roaster for other WBC contenters, which is a testament to his skills. But I do it because I like to talk to the roaster behind the coffee.

Fair enough, but just to be clear my intention was not to debate either side as any more or less reasonable.

The divide is capital vs labor, not left vs right.

Also, protectionism != isolationism.

Actually products of labor and capital are both imported, and no one said anything about isolationism.

Smaller roasters can also specialize.

Starbucks roasts, what, 100m pounds of beans annually? In that 100m, there are plenty of awesome beans. But they have to make all 100m lbs taste good, consistent.

Whereas a small roaster can selectively buy 50 lbs of the best beans and make it taste perfect.

You should give WestCoastRoasting a try. I picked up a few lbs awhile back, they're out of LA. Good variety and excellent pulls of espresso.

pfooti wrote:

"...freshly roasted right near where I live..."

Fresher vs closer. I worked above a roasting plant, got to know the roasters, drank the freshest roasts. Fantastic.

Starbucks in Pike Place used to sell green (unroasted) Sidamo beans. Popular with the local Ethiopian community, who'd roast at home.

Home roasting always sounds so awesome. But I've never done it. Silly me.

There's an opportunity there.

He says he buys freshly roasted, not ground. Roasted coffee does not start degrading before at least a couple weeks.

This is exactly why I stopped obsessing over how recently my beans were roasted. I take my coffee pretty seriously but I cannot tell the difference between days and weeks with coffee beans.

Unfortunately, I don't know what the metric is. I just have this snippet from the article:

> A year earlier, Coffee Review, a trade publication, had given Good Land’s Caturra coffee a score of 91 out of 100, and depending on the roast, brew and time of harvest, the farm’s coffees have scored from the mid-80s to the low 90s on other quality tests.

Unfortunately the article is a bit light on details like which roasteries are selling product. But I imagine some research would find the info, including current varieties and prices.

As for the high price now, I think it's because of the in-development and scarce nature of the product.

So, keep drinking what you're drinking (and kudos for finding your fave), but keep an ear out for future news!

Cost of production from variety to variety at this farm is going to be fairly consistent. The reason coffee has traditionally been relegated to developing countries is because of labor costs. To get a good harvest with quality in mind, farmers typically have to do several passes through the fields of coffee trees to select the coffee cherries at their optimal ripeness. Altitude also factors into quality as well, since coffee that slowly ripens due to cooler temps typically translates to a better product. Farms at high altitude can have some pretty gnarly topography.

Coffee farms where attention to quality is less important and raw output more important will plant trees in full sun, nice conventional rows, and then send mechanical harvesters down each row to strip pick the trees, harvesting cherries that might range from under ripe to perfectly ripe to over ripe. Yields might be higher and labor costs lower, but quality suffers and these beans are typically sold in the commodity market.

The need for labor screams subsidy. This is an area where a subsidy could increase labor pool and decrease imports/deficits.

Or simplify the H2-A (temporary agricultural worker) visa process.

No, I think society needs to find a way to fill jobs like that locally.

Okay, I completely missed. Explain me again why should the average American taxpayer subsidize the habits of a snob coffee drinkers?

I'm not arguing for a coffee labor subsidy. I'm arguing for a farm labor subsidy. Or ultimately UBI.

I think it screams the need for price increase. If not enough people want to purchase coffee at the price to support local labor, then either sufficient demand does not exist or a new method of performing the laborious task needs to be invented.

The reason labor is cheaper in other countries is because those people have no other options, and I see no reason for taxpayers to subsidize a luxury good.

I don't see farmhand labor as a luxury good.

Why exactly should a luxury good be subsidized ?

If the importance of providing people with a way of earning money is so important, why not just cut the middle-man and provide life income ?

$25 is not very much when you compare it to other luxury goods, like wine or whisky or cask-aged beers. I started drinking coffee because it was a relatively inexpensive hobby.

Essentially thats tax minimisation

People aren't consuming those on a a daily basis; not really a fair comparison.

I don't know what "people" you know, but quite a few of my friends who drink both drink a lot more $ of alcohol than coffee.

If you're from Italy, Spain, or France to name a few, you do drink a glas every day. But either way, a single good bottle of wine is at least a pound of good coffee. Few people drink that much coffee.

$25/lb is on the high end. What beans are you buying?

My local roaster / coffeeshop: http://www.andytownsf.com/ I usually get the Amaro Gayo Ethopian beans (I tend to prefer african beans to south / central american ones, and ethiopian over the rest of africa, but that's not hard-and-fast, the $50 / lb beans were also from andytown, but central american, costa rica IIRC).

Seriously and in all honestly they roast the best beans I've ever had. I've lived on both coasts, had a lot of coffee. It's not super cheap ($10 - $17 for a half-pound) but it is worth it. There may be better coffee, but I imagine it is one of those logarithmic scale things - I'd have to pay 10x for a 10% increase in taste or whatever.

I can give an unsolicited recommendation for Red Bird Coffee's Red Bird or Blue Jaguar espresso blends. They are reasonably priced (~$14 / lb) and have been extraordinarily consistent for me (I usually make Americanos). When I order beans it's clear they were roasted one or two days before they were shipped.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com