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Comment by econcon | Hacker News Reader

I think coffee requires more skills/equipment (cost) than tea. It's much harder to create good coffee than good tea.

Cezve and grinder? That's not a costly equipment.

If you want consistency that grinder is going to cost a lot. There are diminishing returns and $60 grinder will get you 80% of the way. But going from 80% to 99% you're looking at a price increase of about $1800. You're obviously not going to buy that equipment for your home though.

Who are you kidding? Of course we are. I have a $2000 grinder on the way.

Edit: I don't buy that a $60 dollar grinder will get you 80% of the way. The output of such cheap grinders that I have seen have very poor consistency. You're looking at low hundreds to get anything decent and even then you will have very clear differences when matched against a top end grinder.

On the continuum from preground coffee to cafe quality pour over, a $60 wilfa burr griner will get you 80% in my opinion. You'll have days when the brew comes out very well, some days it's disappointing. The biggest advantage when going from no grinder to cheap grinder is that you can buy quality beans rather than supermarket coffee and that time from grinding to brewing is minimized, so you lose less flavour. For me, that's 80% of the value for 20% of the effort/money.

Ah, ok sure. I agree.

> I don't buy that a $60 dollar grinder will get you 80% of the way.

Is a used Baratza Encore much more expensive than that? A new one is US$ 140:

* https://thewirecutter.com/reviews/the-best-coffee-grinder/

Honestly for pour over methods I think a Baratza Encore or similar is plenty fine and will get you probably 90% of the way. For coffee snobs like me and you, maybe that is only 50% :).

Obviously espresso is completely different, and agreed, you'd have to be at the mid-hundreds to get to a barely good-enough starting point.

I'm using something like $20 grinder I guess, I bought it 15 years ago and it works fine for me.

That said, I prefer to buy grinded coffee. It's not perfect, but miles ahead of instant coffee. That's perfect combination of time/price/taste for me.

It's still equipment, and tea is more 'fire and forget' to make.

Not really. Tea is oxydized in pans or with steam, cured, aged etc.

I do believe the OP meant "to prepare for drinking", not "to prepare into the sellable product".

It's just as easy to prepare coffee. Greek or Turkish coffee is the easiest to brew, one just needs a pot.

What about Instant Coffee?

Instant coffee is no substitute for the real stuff.

Instant coffee is a US$30+ billion global market segment, and about half of all coffee drinkers drink instant coffee.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/07/14/almos...

Yes. That doesn't make it a substitute for the real thing. I either use a full ceramic burr grinder and Aeropress setup with some recently-roasted single-origin beans OR instant coffee if I only have a few minutes before I have to leave the house in the morning, in which case I do the full brew later in the day. I don't see them as sustainable substitutes any more than tea and coffee are substitutes.

Yeah, it's more like beer vs wine. Not really substitutes except in the narrow sense of delivering the active ingredient.

Instant coffee can be pretty great. I like the Japanese/Korean brands like UCC and Kanu.

Instant coffee is the real stuff.

I use a mortar and pestle, if I can't grind the beans at my local supermarket.

i used the grider at the grocery store :\

Which is why I'm so astonished Americans make tea so poorly. Tepid water with a tea bag on the side is not the way to brew a cup of tea.

> Tepid water

This is because most American's don't have a kettle (at home or work). I think quite a few Europeans do.

It's also why so many (baking) recipes in the US measure (e.g.) flour in cups/volume: most people don't have scales.

I refuse to believe Americans can't produce a cup of 100 Degree celcius boiling water either at home or at work.

It's not about "can't", it's about "this water is hot enough after microwaving it for 30s, it'll be fine".

Is there a point to the 100 degrees reference? its like saying a lightspeed flashlight

Because the temperature of the water determines how well extraction occurs. Sub-100°C (for black tea) and you get a shitty tasting tea (I like to call it 'herb water').

* https://www.thespruceeats.com/how-to-brew-tea-water-temperat...

It's similar to coffee (93°C)

* https://www.scaa.org/PDF/resources/golden-cup-standard.pdf

I'll admit I can't. (It boils at 95 C)

what is your geographic elevation? 4500 feet id guess.

I was on a trip to the US last year, and tried the English Breakfast K-Cup in our hotel room. Let's just say I'm not making that mistake again...

I honestly don't know how they make it so bad, here in Europe even if I bought the cheapest box of supermarket tea (around 50c for 20 bags) and dunked it in a cup of warm water for 10 seconds it would taste better.

I find even hot water with tea bag and cold milk does not taste good. In India its usually hot water, tea powder along with milk brewed together. Drink hot.

I think it's cause tea is so much more expensive over here. I can buy a gourmet type of coffee for like 10-15. To get the same level of tea for maybe half the amount of servings I get out of the coffee, it costs the same if not more.

I do like certain types of those gourmet teas where you need a kettle for them. They're great, but I like something warm and I can have it everyday, especially in winter. I simply could not afford that with the teas.

It's probably my lack of experience, but I find tea harder to make correctly. Depending on the tea, should I rinse the leaves ahead of time? How long do I let it steep? How hot should the water be? How much tea should I even use?

For coffee, I pour hot water over my ground coffee until the pot underneath is full of coffee.

That is a very oversimplified way to describe making coffee - and thats just for one method of brewing.

You have so many variations of brewing like pourover, drip, french press, espresso etc. and each of these methods has a ton of individual variables that affect the final product ranging such as water temp, bean freshness, grind coarseness and much more.

I am certainly not a coffee expert (I'm too lazy to actually dive into the world of craft coffee I just drink the free coffee at work) but I do enjoy espresso when I am out and love reading about coffee/brewing

There are two things econcon could've meant by "create" - either what happens before the tea/coffee reaches your shop, or what happens afterwards. I'll go with your interpretation...

I'm a fan of tea, ignorant about coffee.

Tea brewing generally has three variables: amount/proportion of leaves/water, water temperature, brewing time. With coffee, those three are still applicable. And there's a fourth variable: how finely one grinds it, and perhaps a fifth one: whether/what pressure to apply while brewing.

I usually don't even rinse oolongs/greens and it's fine. If you don't rinse your puerh, the first brew is just going to taste like a rinse. No big deal - enjoy the subsequent brews :)

How was it ground? How was it roasted? How hot should your water be?

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