My point is that this effort is not feasible for most people. If my morning drink takes me more effort than getting showered and dressed, i'll probably forgo it 90% of the time. I'm working on this form of laziness, but that's the willpower/patience most people have to live with. In addition there is a whole host of other reasons why something that's easy and routine for you can be quite vexing for other people.
Opening a can takes less then ten seconds, we're already talking about a harsh diet change, we don't have to make it harder than necessary for people.
The Baratza Encore is $139 on Amazon, and should be sufficient for pourovers of any kind.
Of course, if you pour bad water into your machine, you're still not going to get the best you could get regardless of which method you use.
And I wasn't speaking anything about price (where Nespresso loses). Nor was I speaking of convenience (where Nespresso is great for 1-2 cups at a time).
I used an Aeropress for years, and it is tricky to get consistent results; plus it's a bit of a cleanup chore. Also, there's still the question of whether to use the Aeropress the way it was intended, or instead to do the upside-down brief-brew method.
I currently happily use a standard Melitta brewer where I can put good beans, freshly ground, and good water in and then get 10 cups of coffee 10 minutes later. My partner and I wouldn't enjoy our liesurely outdoor coffee time nearly as much if one of us were having to run back in the house and make a new Aeropress coffee every 15 minutes.
(Incidentally, make the pot of coffee and then pour it into a pre-warmed thermal carafe. It's not good to keep cooking it on the burner.)
I suspect people consider espresso-based beverages more premium because they tend to be made on the spot, and also because the mass market has been trained to think like that.
Filter coffee probably reminds people of diner coffee, or something lower-end.
I'd personally take filter coffee anytime, preferably using beans that aren't roasted too dark. It's so much easier to drink.
My current aeropress and filter are from 2012 and I'm not really in need of an upgrade any time soon so it's honestly a very affordable brewing device.
I do agree on the beans though, freshly roasted beans are more expensive and on top of that a grinder would also be a good idea. You can get a decent electric burr grinder around here for a bit over 60 dollars. On average, I buy both cheap and expensive beans, the cheaper ones are around 10 dollars per kilo and the more expensive ones are around 60 to 70 dollars per kilo. Quick maths tells me that a 8oz cup of the cheaper stuff comes down to about 13 cents and the more expensive one just under a dollar so definitely cheaper than any cafe and this is 3rd wave artisan type coffee we're talking about.
Aeropress is basically idiot proof as well, anyone can make a decent cup of coffee with it so I don't really buy into the Nespresso argument here either. For an investment of under a hundred bucks, you can most definitely enjoy extremely good black coffee at home with very palatable running costs as well. I'm happy to expand if anyone has _any_ coffee related questions.