> Drink it black, and get used to it.

If you're going to end your advice with "get used to it", do you really need everything that came before?

it does take some time to learn the appreciation - like spicy foods.

Drinking it black means you taste the full flavour without the bitterness being masked by milk or sugar. But for me personally, drinking esspresso without milk is only good if the beans are excellent, and brewed to perfection by a proper barista (a level of skill i have yet to truly attain - that's why i buy my esspresso instead of making it myself).

But a milk-based coffee drink like latte or cappacino doesn't require that level of quality, and would still taste really good. So for the home, i recommend making milk drinks yourself, with medium quality fresh beans, while you buy esspresso from a trusted barista/cafe that you know is using great (single origin!) beans.

I'm generally (and a little counterintuitively) against improving the quality of things I try. I noticed that the hedonic treadmill makes it so that my level of enjoyment is the same as the lower-quality thing, it just makes it so I can't go back.

For example, I used to have these shitty speakers, but I'd enjoy music very much all the same. Then, I got great speakers, and could hear all the nuances, but I enjoyed music the same amount, the only difference is that I now needed expensive speakers to do it.

From then on, I decided that ignorance in these matters is usually bliss, and avoid (for example) looking at OLED TVs as the blacks on my TV don't bother me, but they would start to if I bought an OLED TV and I could never go back.

hahah, that's a nice philosophy.

thanks for "expounding" it :p

Haha, you're very welcome!

For the "keep it fresh" part, I use Fellow Atmos containers for my beans (I'm sure there are other options too). They allow you to pump out the air by twisting the lid back and forth. I live by myself and only drink 2-3 cups of coffee a week, so it's been useful since a standard 12 oz bag lasts over a month for me.

i use a burr grinder, temperature controlled kettle, weigh the beans and the water, and use a pour-over method with a decent paper filter.

but in my experience, freshness is the biggest factor to good coffee--mainly being freshly (and adequately) roasted, but also freshly ground before use. everything else seems to be relatively marginal after that.

edit: i buy locally roasted coffee that's delivered to my door for about the price of starbucks or peets ( <=$1/oz ). that's been the biggest difference.

You can use a French Press for cold brew, too. Just leave it cool and plunge it in the morning. I think you can even leave it out of the fridge overnight?

> Drink it black

I learned to drink MIL-SPEC coffee black at Boeing, because the Boeing creamer tasted like it was mined.

I liked McDonalds coffee before they tried to copy Starbucks. Horrible and black and perfect for road trips!