Costs of Convenience

Since going on this coffee journey, we have had conversations with friends and family that use and love their drip and pod machines because they are SO convenient. True, it is nice to dump some old coffee into a drip machine, set a timer and have it ready and waiting for you when you get up or push a button and have a cup on demand. The problem is…it tastes like crap! Some have resorted to dumping tons of sugar and flavored creamer into their coffee to mask the nasty. Which really just makes it more gross and terrible for you, (the recent research that says coffee has positive health benefits for you was referring to black coffee, not light tan coffee with creamer and eight tablespoons of sugar in it)! If you are going to add all of that to your coffee, why not just drink hot chocolate? You might get the same amount of caffeine from the chocolate and eliminate the hassle of getting the creamer to sugar ratio just right.

My wife recently had a friend come over for a visit and she made a pot of fresh coffee for her. Once the brewing process was complete, she poured two cups of black coffee and served her friend. They chatted for a while, had a great visit and her friend left. It occurred to my wife hours after her friend left that she did not offer her cream or sugar (we are not total jerks, we do consider other people’s needs to mask their terrible coffee). My wife texted her friend to apologize and to our surprise her friend said that was the first time she had ever drunk black coffee and she LOVED it! If you have never tasted fresh, small-batch roasted coffee that is ground just before slowly brewing it using a method that fully extracts all of the flavors, you may never know you are drinking crappy coffee. I beg you, please, try some just once. It does not have to be from us! Find a local roaster near you and try some. You should try different kinds from different regions, they all have unique flavor notes, just like fine wine (recent studies show that coffee has far more notes and nuances than wine)! Does it cost more and take a little longer to brew? Yes, but some of the best meals I have ever had took much longer than driving up to a window and saying, “I’d like that microwaved hamburger please”.

We should all be able to agree that food items that take longer to produce/cultivate tastes better. For example, grass-fed, dry aged beef fresh from a local butcher verses mass produced chuck at the grocery store; a beef brisket smoked for 10 hours in a ceramic egg; properly aged/stored wine verses Boones Farm wine (speaking as an adult here not a teenager!); a gourmet meal versus fast food. If these are true, why then do we decide to settle for coffee that has sat around for months on a shelf somewhere and brewed in a drip machine or worse a pod machine?! You agree with the above but not sure you want to take the plunge and ditch the pod machines? Consider this: People are furious today about plastic straws and yet millions of pounds of plastic trash per day is generated from coffee pods. John Sylvan, the creator of the pod, got rid of his pod machine and has said he regrets ever creating them because of the massive amount of plastic waste that comes with the amazing convenience of it (John Sylvan runs a solar panel company now and wants nothing to do with pod machines anymore). Save the planet, support a local/small business AND get to drink coffee that is a million times better tasting than what you are used to…YES PLEASE! 

Not sure what to switch to? We can help with that. We will create a Favorite Brewing Gear Page and put links to all of the different tools we have come to love so that you can decide what you would like to try. Have questions about how to make the plunge? Email us or post your questions in our Facebook Group and lots of people can help, some may be going through the exact same issue you are. Not sure what kind of coffee you will like? We offer 6-ounce bags, so you can sample different kinds until you find the one you love! Why 6-ounce? Each pot we notice slightly different flavors so, we found that it takes a minimum of three pots to truly decide if we like a coffee or not. Once you find a coffee you love you can buy it in our re-sealable 12-ounce bags and continue sampling others in the 6-ounce bags! Each month we even offer a free 2-ounce bag of one of our favorites for you to try and post what you think about it on our Monthly Coffee Review Facebook group page.

We are not experts by any stretch of the term. We are ordinary people that have stumbled through this coffee experience for years and want to share everything we have learned along the way. What better way to learn than from other people’s mistakes! We love to show everyone around us the wonders of fresh coffee because life is just too short to settle for crappy coffee no matter how convenient it is.