Coffee?

[GC]

−log10 c, where c is the hydrogen ion concentration in moles per liter, or "potential hydrogen"

That's straight out of Google, but not quite right. No subscripts in the Tubenet editor. It's the inverse log base 10 of hydrogen ion concentration in moles per liter, if my memory of freshman chemistry 50 years ago is right.

[ken k]

I have been making cold brew and I can drink it hot or cold...less acid and tastes great!
Also I have been brewing half-caf, so I am less jittery...

ken k

[Mark Horne]

One cup in the morning - a 22 ounce Nissan stainless steel will usually last me past noon. Used to grind my own coffee but have found that Dunkin' Donuts medium roast is right up my alley. Brewed using a Bunn semi-commercial coffee maker that stores the hot water inside. Takes 3 minutes to brew an entire pot. Learned to take my coffee black back in my oilfield days - no time to add anything!

[WC8KCY]

i bought a small box of walmart french roast pods to get me through the weekend hoping there'll be a new shipment in next week. actually the walmart french roast isn't bad at all. i was surprised.

I'm not surprised...Walmart once sold 1 lb. bricks of 100% Arabica coffee that was really quite good. I normally don't care to patronize Walmart, but that was the ONE product they sold that I'd even drive a little out of my way to buy.

[Three Valves]

Store shelves around are 80% K cups and 20% normal coffee.

[WC8KCY]

Store shelves around are 80% K cups and 20% normal coffee.

It's getting close to 50/50 here.

Honestly, I thought K-cups were going be a passing fad. Compared to traditional brewing methods, they cost much more per cup to brew and, worse yet, those empty K-cups create a lot of extra garbage. For those reasons, you'll never find a K-cup machine in my home.

[Doug Elliott]

I use a Keurig just as a hot water dispenser to make coffee with an Aeropress. Since I only put reverse-osmosis filtered water in it, there's no mineral buildup and I clean it only occasionally with vinegar.

I have discovered that Aldi has one outstanding coffee - Simply Nature Organic Peru whole beans, which I grind by hand. It's as good as anything I've ever had.

[roweenie]

I have discovered that Aldi has one outstanding coffee - Simply Nature Organic Peru whole beans, which I grind by hand. It's as good as anything I've ever had.

+1

And, it's only $3.79 per bag....!

[tofu]

[

[BopEuph]

In the last year the k-cups are now taking about 70% of this space and the other 30% being mostly ground coffee. Whole bean coffee has just about disappeared.

If you have a Fresh Market, they have like a few dozen choices of fresh beans. They're all about $10-12 per pound. I'm really digging the Kona.

Once I started getting fresh beans, pre-ground coffee is just not in the same league.

[WC8KCY]

Locally we have a small roastery that is an interesting story. The coffee is very good and obviously incredibly fresh. They use quality beans. It's a very small start up and completely manned by ex-felons just out of prison. They get training, a job & learn a trade. Their only retail outlet is they run the coffee shop in the library which is where I first tasted it. They only sell the bagged coffee beans at the roastery, but their hours are a bit like bankers hours which makes it a bit of a challenge for me to buy. I like the coffee and supporting people trying to make good on a second chance in life.

+1. You're a good egg, tofu!

[Worth]

For those who brew, I've recently discovered a roasted barley out of France from the Malteries Franco Belges company called Kiln Coffee. All barley, no coffee, but a spectacular similarly roasted flavor and aroma in the end product.

[Boomer]

I like my coffee black. I'm not one of the cool coffee kids.

I always describe my coffee as "black, with sugar," because I've always interpreted it as "black" = no milk (nothing to do with sugar). I think I'm the only person to say this.

The very few times I have been in Starbucks or one of the local coffee houses, and order a "black coffee", I get the look from the 29 something barista as if I had just committed a gastric indiscretion.

They get even more taken aback, when they asked "what do you want in it", "coffee". I truly believe that some of them cannot imagine a drink with just coffee in it. Of course at nearly $4 bucks a pop, I can see why they may think that.

It's more my style to go the Waffle House, and it's bottomless coffee pot, brought to you be a waitress who will call you "hun". It's not great coffee but it's good enough.

[Donn]

I thought calling people "Hun" went out with World War I.

Starbucks probably doesn't do this, but if you live in a populous place, there might be a coffee shop somewhere that offers coffee brewed in a "siphon" gizmo of some kind. That's coffee no one's going to funk up with anything, and at least you'd have the impression that you were getting something special for your $4.

It's the same mechanism as the classic coffee pots of ca. 100 years ago, with the glass pot on top of a glass globe. The top part is a funnel, where the ground coffee is placed while the water heats up in the pot. The funnel is sealed into to the pot, so when the pot boils, the expanding steam forces the water out into the funnel. The heat is then removed from the pot, and as it cools it draws the brewed coffee back in, and the neck passes water but not grounds. The virtue of this system is that the water hits the coffee at just the right temperature, hot but not boiling. I have a Sunbeam from the '30s, made of chrome plated copper, but alas something recently became toasted in the electric base, and it appears to need some special tools to even take it apart to see what died.

[BopEuph]

The very few times I have been in Starbucks or one of the local coffee houses, and order a "black coffee", I get the look from the 29 something barista as if I had just committed a gastric indiscretion.

Probably because you can taste how awful Starbucks coffee actually is without it being 50% sugar. I drink my coffee black, and it was an eye opener why everyone gets all those weird concoctions with a bit of coffee in it. If you could actually taste the coffee, you probably wouldn't want it.

They overroast their beans to the point that it tastes like it's burnt. The justification is that it's better to make sure everything's roasted rather than a few underroasted beans getting through (I think that's a safety issue?).

And when they serve it, it's damn close to boiling, which just burns that coffee even more.

[bort]

I thought calling people "Hun" went out with World War I.

Not in Baltimore.

[Donn]

The very dark roast thing goes back way before Starbucks, who I believe got it from the Italians, via Peets. Only in the last couple decades has it really made sense to move away from that, as availability of freshly roasted high quality coffee makes it more practical to build a style around the taste of that coffee itself rather than the roast charcoal. The "third wave" adherents have been doing just that, albeit with mixed results - in general I can't say I'm a fan of that style either.

Anyway, it's no surprise to see national restaurant or even gas station chains come up with a better and cheaper cup of "black coffee" than Starbucks. If you and your friends could go in there and hang out at a table for hours over a big cup or two of really good coffee for under $2 a cup, I think there's a distinct possibility that it would cut into their sales of more profitable drinks.

[Rick Denney]

The very few times I have been in Starbucks or one of the local coffee houses, and order a "black coffee", I get the look from the 29 something barista as if I had just committed a gastric indiscretion.

No, they are just confused by what you mean. I drink dark roast, black, at Starbucks. I order it this way, "Venti dark roast no room." That navigates all the things they have to enter into their stupid system.

They have lightly roasted coffee (blonde), medium roast (their default Pike Place, named after Pike Place Market in Seattle, where Starbucks #1 is located), and dark roast. "Black coffee" leaves them with too many choices. I've had coffee at no fewer than several hundred different Starbucks stores around the country, from #1 on up, and had to learn the lingo.

It could be worse. My wife's drink is: "Grande almond-milk chai tea latte with cinnamon and nutmeg on the bottom." Sigh.

Rick "you don't want them making any assumptions about what you want" Denney

[Rick Denney]

They overroast their beans to the point that it tastes like it's burnt.

I have always agreed with this. And yet I must have gotten used to it, because now the regular coffee I get other places just tastes like hot colored water. I do NOT get a real coffee flavor out of typical coffee.

Rick "expecting coffee to have something to say, but preferring smooth beer rather than the hoppy, hoppier, hoppiest beer the millennials seem to prefer as manhood signaling" Denney

[GC]

I drink their coffee at home, but at the stores it's way, way too strong. It's fine the way I make it, at least IMHO.

And I agree with Rick. Too many American microbrewers use the most godawful offensive hop varieties and in ridiculous amounts. If I wanted beer to taste like grapefruit or other bitter citrus, I'd buy beer with the juice added. Not that I ever would. Give me the more traditional stuff, preferably so dark you can't shine a light through it.