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Comment by nunez | Hacker News Reader

You'll start to taste the difference once you get that one really-well-made pourover at a place that _lives_ for the love of coffee.

There are some coffee beans that have crazy taste profiles when properly extracted with the right water. I had one that tastes literally like a peach and another that tasted like a really nice tea.

Or maybe not. Different strokes!

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So I can taste differences, but they simply don't matter enough for me. My areopressed coffee with nice fresh locally roasted beans does taste different from a mcdonalds pot. Less harsh, less chemically flavored. But for me those differences don't really matter. They are close enough that I can enjoy both.

But I would say I know I'm also weird in that food temp really doesn't bother me all that much. I enjoy my coffee even as it goes from hot to cold.

A steak for me can be more easily messed up. But then I've not tried instant coffee so maybe I've just never tasted the bottom of the barrel for coffee.

Yeah Mcdonalds is, at this point, acceptably C-grade coffee. You have to go to something like a cafe bustelo in distilled water to get the full contrast.

Really, I get it, even bad pizza is still pizza.

Same but I’m sure my sense of smell is weaker (or average?). On the other hand, my sense of color differentiation is extremely fine.

Unsurprisingly my interests are very color-dominant (design, art, fashion) and I do not care for anything where smell matters (wine, coffee, flowers).

Most people can't will themselves to even drink coffee without sugar and cream to dampen the bitterness. You care enough to make your normal coffee at least quite good, but maybe not enough to obsess beyond that, and that's fine, not everything needs to be a hobby.

Additionally, if you mess up a really good steak, that's like $30+, whereas if I mess up a pourover, that's ~$20/(340g / grams per cup); a relatively small risk surface.

Personally, I think if you actually like coffee, most of it should be drinkable, and the really great cups with rare beans that sit on the margins can be appreciated occasionally for what they are when fortune prevails. The bottom of the barrel for me is basically anything "second wave" or straight out of a gas station. Even instant coffee and McDonalds isn't as bad a place that has "Java" in the name or claims to have "gourmet" coffee. Older Italian places often fall into this, because (some) tend use the absolute cheapest Robusta beans with the harshest darkest roast profiles. Robusta tends to be the most rubbery burnt tire tasting crap out there.

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