Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
Which can be quite expensive, unless you are buying the dirt-cheap stuff. If you drink coffee, how do you balance quality against cost?
Consider home roasting. In the US (where you are not), I buy microlots of unroasted coffee beans originating in Costa Rica, Guatemala, Colombia, Ethiopia, Rwanda, Yemen, and the like. I'll buy perhaps 30 pounds at a time, which lasts me about 6 months. Price per pound will be roughly $6.50 or so. One pound of unroasted "greens" yields about 12-13 oz. of roasted coffee beans (moisture is driven out during the roasting process). And "coffee bean" is a misnomer; it is technically a seed.
To get started, pretty much all you need is a thrift-store quality hot air popcorn popper. Go on YouTube and search for roasting coffee, and you'll find lots of demonstrations. It is quite simple, and the end result is very good quality roasted coffee. Then, all you need is a coffee grinder and your favorite preparation method.
I prefer the "Clever Coffee Dripper," which is sort of a cross between a French Press (where you "steep" the coffee for several minutes) and a Melita (where you use a paper filter). See: https://youtu.be/m_-wyjaCPj8
Last edited by RationalExpectations; 01-17-2019 at 01:40 PM..
Plenty of ways to save money but for me, I love really good coffee.
I’m not going to Starbucks each morning to pay their prices,however I’m not opposed to paying for coffee beans that produce an excellent tasting coffee that I enjoy.
Just one of life little pleasures for those with a palette for good coffees!
I had to give it up for a couple of years because of gastrointestinal problems. Oh, that was sad. I've never been a morning person, have always been a slow starter, but that was miserable. I not only missed drinking coffee, but dozed off at the table in the morning.
I'll always be able to afford coffee because I like it.
Twenty open burlap sacks with 30lbs or more of recently roasted beans in each along with a paper sign, the scale, some plain paper bags and a big shiny grinder.
But it's so authentically Euro!
Quote:
What do you use?
Big screw-top Tupperware jar. I have to, since I blend the beans and don't want to do it one pot at a time.
Quote:
After a nice dinner with friends? Yeah I can see that. 5:30am? Not so much
Oh, it's definitely a special-times thing. But worth it.
We buy the 3 lb bags of beans at Costco for about $15. They have different varieties - so far we've tried Guatemalan, Rwandan (my favorite) and Costa Rican. The Costa Rican is a little too dark for us so we blend it with a lighter roast. Overall it's a great deal for decent beans.
When visiting friends recently, they had a subscription to Peet's coffee which was quite good, but runs around $15 a pound - too expensive for us.
We buy the 3 lb bags of beans at Costco for about $15. They have different varieties - so far we've tried Guatemalan, Rwandan (my favorite) and Costa Rican.
Most people who try the African varieties never think much of South American beans again. Despite all the hype from Folgers et al., an awful lot of low-grade coffee is grown in SA and even supposedly superior stuff is cut and blended a bit. (Something like the tankers of cheap wine that disappear into the named regions of France and are supposed to go unnoticed...)
Tanzanian Peaberry, Kenya AA... now those are coffee.
I've had to cut back on my coffee drinking too. My body is telling me 'no'. I did try a new coffee shop today with my son, but I only have a treat like that a few times a year.
We aren't snobs. We have several bags of coffee. I bought house blend at Costco yesterday at my husband's request. My kids all took/are taking German in school. They like to go to Aldi and try the German foods including coffee. A 1 lb brick of German coffee at Aldi is $5.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
