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Comment by Roritharr | Hacker News Reader

Having done keto for a long time I can only recommend two options besides Tea.

1. Become a weird coffee person and put some nerd energy into it so black coffee doesn't taste disgusting on it's own. James Hoffman on YouTube is a great way into this.

2. Eschew the coffee and take a teaspoon of MCT Oil before your can of zero-calorie Energy Drink (Coke Zero Energy is my favorite atm). It may be dirty and people are going to tell you Aspartame is evil and is going to make you hungry(it really might, but you are still hours away from your window so black/white discipline is easy to keep alive), but for me it worked much better than dreading the coffee in the morning.

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If your black coffee tastes disgusting on its own, you need to buy better coffee.

And use good water, and follow best practices for whatever brewing method you prefer.

Failing any of these (including getting quality beans that are recently brewed), and your coffee may be much worse than it needs to be.

I despise Nestle business and social practices, but a Nespresso machine with Nespresso pods is probably the best coffee that most people could hope to make.

That's what I mean, if you don't intend to become a weird coffee person black coffee is just not a pleasurable experience for most people.

Starbucks made coffee appealing for a vast amount of the population by legitimising to drink 350ml of milk with lots of sugar by adding an espresso. If you are part of this crowd, the sad truth is that zero carb energy drinks are the more realistic morning beverage alternative for you.

> if you don't intend to become a weird coffee person black coffee is just not a pleasurable experience for most people.

Black coffee is the bomb. Don’t care if it’s Starbucks, Peet’s, FamilyMart, 7-11, it is the superior method of caffeine consumption, whether you like espresso, Americano or some other variety. I do not care about coffee snob stuff but coffee is best served black. Speaking personally.

De gustibus non est disputandum.

Roasted *, but I disagree. Nespresso is easy, but it's expensive and even at best it tastes like hot garbage. You can grab aeropress for like 30 dollars and throw in a metal filter for like 5 dollars and that's already capable of making single cups of excellent coffee for years.

My current aeropress and filter are from 2012 and I'm not really in need of an upgrade any time soon so it's honestly a very affordable brewing device.

I do agree on the beans though, freshly roasted beans are more expensive and on top of that a grinder would also be a good idea. You can get a decent electric burr grinder around here for a bit over 60 dollars. On average, I buy both cheap and expensive beans, the cheaper ones are around 10 dollars per kilo and the more expensive ones are around 60 to 70 dollars per kilo. Quick maths tells me that a 8oz cup of the cheaper stuff comes down to about 13 cents and the more expensive one just under a dollar so definitely cheaper than any cafe and this is 3rd wave artisan type coffee we're talking about.

Aeropress is basically idiot proof as well, anyone can make a decent cup of coffee with it so I don't really buy into the Nespresso argument here either. For an investment of under a hundred bucks, you can most definitely enjoy extremely good black coffee at home with very palatable running costs as well. I'm happy to expand if anyone has _any_ coffee related questions.

As someone who has just started the journey towards coffee snobbery, I quickly had the impression that the grinder is the most important piece of kit needed, but from my research the electric burr grinders <300$ were hot garbage that produce very uneven coffee grounds, resulting in a very hard to control brew. But this is just YouTube and Reddit knowledge, would you agree? I currently have my eyes on a Niche Zero grinder, but at 560€ it's quite the investment. If you then buy a Chemex, V60, Aeropress or any other brewing method is a question of choice, but don't forget to filter your water before using it...

My point is that this effort is not feasible for most people. If my morning drink takes me more effort than getting showered and dressed, i'll probably forgo it 90% of the time. I'm working on this form of laziness, but that's the willpower/patience most people have to live with. In addition there is a whole host of other reasons why something that's easy and routine for you can be quite vexing for other people.

Opening a can takes less then ten seconds, we're already talking about a harsh diet change, we don't have to make it harder than necessary for people.

> I quickly had the impression that the grinder is the most important piece of kit needed, but from my research the electric burr grinders <300$ were hot garbage that produce very uneven coffee grounds, resulting in a very hard to control brew.

The Baratza Encore is $139 on Amazon, and should be sufficient for pourovers of any kind.

Chances are, the average Joe (pun intended) will not make a better cup than Nespresso, at least based on this ( https://www.grubstreet.com/2013/03/nespresso-sold-at-micheli... ) and this ( https://www.businessinsider.com/baristas-are-going-obsolete-... ).

Of course, if you pour bad water into your machine, you're still not going to get the best you could get regardless of which method you use.

And I wasn't speaking anything about price (where Nespresso loses). Nor was I speaking of convenience (where Nespresso is great for 1-2 cups at a time).

I used an Aeropress for years, and it is tricky to get consistent results; plus it's a bit of a cleanup chore. Also, there's still the question of whether to use the Aeropress the way it was intended, or instead to do the upside-down brief-brew method.

I currently happily use a standard Melitta brewer where I can put good beans, freshly ground, and good water in and then get 10 cups of coffee 10 minutes later. My partner and I wouldn't enjoy our liesurely outdoor coffee time nearly as much if one of us were having to run back in the house and make a new Aeropress coffee every 15 minutes.

(Incidentally, make the pot of coffee and then pour it into a pre-warmed thermal carafe. It's not good to keep cooking it on the burner.)

> Chances are, the average Joe (pun intended) will not make a better cup than Nespresso, at least based on this…

I suspect people consider espresso-based beverages more premium because they tend to be made on the spot, and also because the mass market has been trained to think like that.

Filter coffee probably reminds people of diner coffee, or something lower-end.

I'd personally take filter coffee anytime, preferably using beans that aren't roasted too dark. It's so much easier to drink.

I disagree. I've had all of the most expensive coffees including Blue Mountain and Kona. I just don't think coffee is nice without some fat and/or sugar. It has a really bitter, astringent aftertaste that just isn't pleasant. I don't know why it's controversial. There are many foods (maybe even most foods) that aren't particularly nice on their own.

Blue Mountain and Kona sound like gimmicks to me. You should try a V60 pourover using a Geisha bean [1], preferably done by a barista who's really into pourovers.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geisha_(coffee)

Yeah, and neat alcohol tastes lovely.

I’m an enthusiastic drinker of coffee and alcoholic drinks and when I started drinking them they tasted vile and needed lots of other flavors to disguise how awful they tasted. The first time I had coffee of any kind, quite milky, I wretched. Some people just hate the flavor of coffee enough never to get over it, same as some people can never find an alcoholic drink they like.

To be fair, if you are used to coffee with milk and sugar, black coffee tends to taste badly, in no small part because of simply eating how one is used to eating. This isn't special to coffee, just very noticeable in it.

If this is one's issue, though, the solution is pretty easy: Wean yourself off. I did such a thing, and it has probably been one of the best things I've done. The cream was the first to go, as I was putting so little in that it was a pain. Sugar eventually went the same way: less than a spoonful or a packet in a standard coffee cup. This was a more difficult transition, honestly, and the coffee tasted weird for a couple of weeks.

This just isn't true. It might be true for your coffee and or how you make it, but a good barista could make a black coffee any form of coffee drinker would like, be it a tea-like fruity filter, clean espresso, whatever. If you don't believe me, you've never been to a good enough cafe. It's unbelievable, the variety of black coffees.

First things first, most folks don't have access to a lot of fine coffee simply because of the cost barrier. Really, you have to work with the stuff that is more often available to people - and for most, that is grocery store coffees of different sorts. The only 'cafe' I had access to with any regularity was Starbucks in the US, and that hardly counts. Small-to-medium sized Indiana towns aren't exactly known for their coffee selection, and really, if the advice can't be used by a good chunk of the population, it isn't going to help much with cutting calories from daily drinks.

I know there are tea-like coffees. I don't like them: I get introduced to new stuff in December, when I order a coffee bean Advent calendar from a little Norwegian brewer: I kinda hate the days of the fruity, tea-ish coffees. Even if they were my favorite, I can't afford to drink this daily.

But that's besides the point. Cream, especially, gives a completely different mouthfeel. When I did put cream in coffee, I would have done it with the fancy coffees as well, though you could talk me into taking a sip otherwise.

I mean, I wouldn't trust most bariatas to make a good coffee, let alone myself with an advent calendar. May if you go to norway you might change your mind.

I now live in Norway, and have for the past 7 years. And I still have this opinion.

The advent calendar is from Kaffebox, and I definitely recommend it, by the way.

Fair enough :) Guess I was pointlessly trying to back up a generalisation.

It’s addictive, so your taste will adapt to what you regularly have. It’s entirely possible to train your body to love instant, you just need to stick with it.

"I only eat dollar store steak and your body needs calories so your taste will adapt."

You can say this about literally any food. Nonsense.

As a German... do.. do your dollar stores actually have steaks?

Scary thought.

Yes, some do, but they’re not actually a dollar. Which only makes it slightly better?

I'm not actually American, just pandering examples to the audience. A pound shop is what we call them in Ireland. Americans wouldn't know what that is.

If you remove predicates (“it’s addictive”) you can reduce anything to the absurd

I didn't remove it I replaced it with needing calories. It's not reductionist to point out that some things are better than others, even when you're used to the worse option.

OK sure. If you remove one predicate and change it with something completely different, you can invalidate any assertion. gg

This be a man o straw.

I had similar issues removing added sugar from my regular meals.

If the bitterness is what bothers you, get beans that are lightly roasted. The bitterness comes from roasting it dark.

I would say you have more options, if you expand your definition of tea to other things than literaly tea-leaves brew :-)

I.e. I had my wakeup ritual with Mint/Nana for a bit and it was nice :-)

But I did discover James Hoffman on youtube and am on a verge of becomming a weird coffe nerd :D

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