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I’m curious, do people even enjoying drinking nice / real coffee anymore when drinking from Starbucks or have it delivered and sipping it at your desk or in the elevator, or is this just some kind of habit like smoking?

Why not just wash down a caffeine pill with warm glass of water for the kick and move when time pressed?

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It's somewhere in between for me, as someone who drinks coffee from a coffee shop almost every day. I crave a good cup of coffee often but when I get it I often just start drinking it and when it's gone I realize I forgot to savor the experience, or I do try to savor the experience but realize the work I did or the article I read or the thoughts I had while drinking it were disappointing. When things align I do still enjoy my coffee very much though. Probably a couple times a week.

I do. Every morning I get the scale out, grind beans, and get the kettle going to prepare a couple of cups of pour-over coffee. I'm still dialing in the perfect pot of coffee, so I'll change a variable in my process each morning. If I time it right, I make my pour over in time to sit down by some natural light and remotely attend my morning meetings as I sip down my beverage. It gives me a nice break from the screen and allows me to focus on doing something highly rewarding with my hands.

As a side note, I've recently started ordering bags of beans online from various roasters I've had around the country. If anyone has recommendations that sell their beans online, I'd love to expand my palette.

I'm still dialing in the perfect pot of coffee, so I'll change a variable in my process each morning.

Aeropress is highly conducive to repeatability and experimentation, due to its tight control of the immersion time interval. I was trying to be careful with pour-over, and still found that I couldn't quite get it down. Now, I can even adjust for the age of the beans I have on hand. (You can go hotter and briefer, to get the caffeine and good stuff, but absorb extracting unpleasant stuff.) Do read and follow the instructions to start.

One big disadvantage is that the filters absorb the oils, but all brewing methods that use filters have this. Also, it uses a lot of grounds to produce a little bit of extract. (Which I dilute and drink as Americano.)

I like coffee. I like the variety of flavors and smells and the warmth and the ritual of it. I roast my own beans nearly every day. I also am addicted to caffeine. For me, there is a sliding scale of preference from my own coffee or sitting down at a good coffee shop to something quick like a Starbucks to instant coffee or caffeine pills, but pretty much no matter what I have a plan or backup plan to at least get some caffeine in the system.

That said, delivery seems a little strange to me. You don't get the little coffee break to walk to somewhere or have some involvement in making it, which seems like a downside. It also seems like a lot of overhead to obtain coffee.

Not sure what coffee shops you have near you but the ones where I live have better coffee than most people have at home.

That's not a particularly hard problem to solve. Buy good roasted beans, a grinder, and basically any coffee pot. Grinding your own beans before brewing makes a big difference vs. brewing a pot of Folgers.

That does of course assume the ability to buy good roasted beans somewhere relatively near you.

I drink Dunkin' Donuts coffee because I don't give a damn about the taste and it's cheap. I like the process of drinking coffee... it's a habit of sorts. Not so much an addiction as I have no problems going without coffee.

May I then suggest drinking water instead? It's healthier and even cheaper.

Coffee isn't a replacement for water. You would still drink water (I hope).

Coffee (with no milk or sugar) is actually really healthy. It has practically no calories, is high in antioxidants, and feels filling (so you might eat less and thus consume fewer calories). Studies have also linked it to higher longevity and reduced risk of heart disease, liver failure, and Alzheimer's.

It's when you get a grande vanilla latte from Starbucks that you load up on milk, sugar, and caffeine.

Funny, I'm a huge coffee drinker and prefer Dunkin' because it's really good.

I love a regular serving of six cups of almost dark coffee. I can't stand real sweet foods as my sense of taste is overwhelmingly strong (yeah I have sensory issues, it's part of life for me).

Maybe they think it tastes good?

It’s a habit and an addiction. But among the available addictions it’s one of the best.

People have told me that, for them, if they don't get their morning coffee that get symptoms like headaches. For me, it's mostly just a habit to have tea or coffee in the morning and relax before starting real work. I like it, but if I'm traveling and there's a line out the door at Starbucks or Dunkin' Donuts, I'll probably just walk on past. I don't really care that much.

>But among the available addictions it’s one of the best.

Why do you feel that way? I've never been a big coffee drinker (for this reason specifically), but everything I've heard about caffeine withdrawals for people who have been daily drinkers for a while is that they are awful - headaches, irritability, extreme fatigue, etc...

The withdrawals are unpleasant but certainly manageable. A good week and you're effectively detoxxed, two and your brain is reset. Moreover, as long as you refrain from adding sugar/sweetener to your coffee it's closer to a benign habit than an addiction, as black coffee has little to no downsides if your heart is ok.

This is coming from a pot/day drinker who's 'quit' multiple times. In the end it's not worth it, because coffee also comes with the pleasant social contract with other coffee drinkers as well as a appetite suppressing effect.

Coffee helps me with fasting. It turns what is a semi uncomfortable experience to an easy thing.

If such a pill was ever created, I surmise that the coffee industry would collapse overnight.

You can get 120 pills of 100mg of caffeine for $6 including shipping "Jet-Alert 100 MG Each Caffeine Tab 120 Count". There are fancier ones that include L-Theanine (found in green tea) to mellow the caffeine jitters out but those are significantly more expensive.

You used to be able to buy a half kilo brick of caffeine on prime for like $30.

That's enough caffeine to give you a heart attack 100 times over, it would last you forever.

It didn't affect the coffee industry because drinking coffee is an enjoyable process, not a one dimensional addiction around caffeine

> it would last you forever

Can confirm. Bought two in 2013, still have ~450 grams in the first bag I opened. Well worth the ~$50 (including a jeweler's scale) for a lifetime supply of preworkout supplements.

The FDA banned bulk caffeine sales in 2015[1] or 2018[2] too. This is probably a good idea, most folks have no idea how much caffeine is in a cup of coffee, much less how to measure that dose in powdered form.

[1] https://www.fda.gov/food/dietary-supplement-products-ingredi... [2] https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-take...

"if I had fifty-three minutes to spend as I liked, I should walk at my leisure toward a spring of fresh water"

From 'The Little Prince' referring to the merchant who sold pills to quench thirst.

I might do that if companies started putting pills in the break room instead of Keurig. I consider coffee and cream a benefit like health care at this point.

You would get a resistance not too long after. I quit caffeine pills because even if I only ever took them once a week they would do nothing but have bad sideeffects. Now I take 5 hour energies/redbulls or else I feel tired by noon after sleeping for 13 hours.

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