If you find "mainstream" coffee enjoyable, is it really in your best interest to raise your expectations? If you suddenly find normal coffee lacking, have you really improved your life?
I still use a french press, but that has a lot to do with convenience. I just don't grind it fresh anymore or spend tons of money on fresh-roasted beans - a bag of 8 O'Clock Colombian works just fine.
So you might find that ultra-fresh coffee brewed in such a special way is the cat's pajamas, or you might like me find that it was way too much time, effort and money for way too little payoff. Trying new things is fun and worthwhile, but in this post-Internet post-9/11 pre-intergalactic wars world, product fetishism definitely abounds ("I won't take notes in anything except a Moleskine journal" and such).
But as always, why em em vee.
However, I recently switched to an Aeropress single cup coffee maker, and it is a HUGE difference - it makes a small concentrated cup of coffee with very little bitterness, and brings out the coffee's natural sweetness. Also, I find it easier to use and clean than a french press. See http://www.aerobie.com/Products/aeropress_story.htm
I do appreciate a good cup of coffee, with fresh beans, a good brewing method, etc, etc. But...I don't have the time or motivation to do that regularly.
You mean you actually roasted good greens, let them degass, ground them correctly and pulled espresso shots (at the right temp./pressure) and found them to have not one bit of diff from regular, supermarket/sb coffee?
The article writer alleges that that process improves your daily coffee significantly - I related my own experience, which was to the contrary.
Actually, I'm surprised that nobody else has mentioned the importance of water. My cheap carafe filter makes a huge difference even to my relatively insensitive palate.
http://shopping.yahoo.com/articles/yshoppingarticles/204/con...
I have this sneaking suspicion that its harvested by third-world leukemia patients, or fertilized with aborted ponies or something else terrible, because it's too good to be true. I live out in the sticks and my coffee options are the grocery store and the gas station. It's not only tastes better, it's half the price of any other whole-bean coffee you can find in a typical grocery store. (I like whole-bean original myself. The Columbian is too sour for me.)
If you find cheap wine enjoyable, that doesn't mean you won't find a Grand Cru a hundred times more delectable.
The same with coffee... after discovering freshly ground French press, I'll drink and really enjoy two cups a day, rather than the 6-10 cups of stale filter coffee I'd drink previously.
Suggesting that this is a bad thing is kind of suggesting that you don't think your tastes should evolve for the better throughout your life. Pushing this argument to its natural conclusion, we should all just eat candy, drink fizzy soda, and watch kids' cartoons for the rest of our lives. Do you think that's a better state than knowing that there are such things as fine food, great wine and inspiring movies and books?
Oh, I didn't mean to imply that. I think it's great.
You're assuming that enjoyment and happiness always improve when drinking better coffee/wine/beer/etc. Untrue. If you're perfectly happy with what you have now, cultivating a more sophisticated taste will usually just frustrate you because now to get the same level of enjoyment you had previously you have to spend more money or time. Going back to what you had before doesn't return you to a baseline level of happiness, it makes you unhappy. To get back to the baseline you now have to regularly consume expensive or time-consuming coffee instead of the cheap stuff.
If your goal in life is to enjoy the "finest things", go right ahead. If your goal in life is to be happy, then be very careful about raising the bar for things that you enjoy. Being able to enjoy cheap crap makes you just as happy as being able to enjoy expensive crap, but at lower cost.
(As it turns out, this argument doesn't apply to books and movies and music because good books, movies, and music cost just as much as the crap ones, and because good art is intellectually stimulating, which is worthwhile for its own reasons.)
I'd say that in many, many cases, "better stuff" has many other advantages than simply being considered better.
I actually am not a big fan of expensive coffee, because I can't taste the difference between a good cup of coffee and an excellent cup of coffee. And some people are not big fans of expensive wine because they can't taste the difference between a bad wine and a good wine. But I don't feel I'm superior to people who can taste the difference. In fact, I'd say I'm inferior - my range of experiences in my life is poorer than theirs - at least when it comes to coffee.
Honestly, I don't see how you can present the ignorance of better things as an advantage, except in are really base, utilitarian way, where we are all hamsters on the hedonistic treadmill with no higher aspirations beyond immediate pleasurable gratification.
I don't feel superior either, I'm just glad I have time and money left over for other things. Feeling superior due to a taste for fancy coffee is the kind of elitism I have no interest in.
Plus there's some well-known psychology behind this stuff. Expensive wine tastes better, in part, largely because it is more expensive.
"Honestly, I don't see how you can present the ignorance of better things as an advantage, except in are really base, utilitarian way, where we are all hamsters on the hedonistic treadmill with no higher aspirations beyond immediate pleasurable gratification."
If you're ignorant of better things, you're happy with what you have. If you're familiar with better things, you're unhappy with what you have, unless you spend time and energy on better things instead, at which point you're just as happy as you were before except with less money and less free time. That's the same reward profile as drug addictions, frankly.
I think it's even more hedonistic to waste time and effort on exceptional food and drink when you could just keep yourself contented with average stuff and devote that time, money, and energy to higher pursuits. Not that I'm entirely uninterested in those kinds of experiences, but I'm not the one to be accusing of hedonism here.
Homebrewed (lit.) coffee will definitely teach you to taste deficiencies in everything from restaurants to Starbucks, but if you don't already think they're there then it's definitely either cheaper or easier to just stay innocent.
My experience was out of frustration with what I felt was watery or burnt or too sugary. Homebrew fits the bill perfectly. YMMV, yeah?