There’s like 15 different communities for coffee! Nice!
Like many of us, I survive largely on the break room coffee pot. Our grounds are running low again and the hospital doesn’t stock it, so it’s on the employees.
Our taste in coffee is driven mostly by cost, so we go through a lot of Costco-sized buckets of Folgers, but Folgers famously tastes like dirt. Still, it’s cheap and it’s coffee, so that’s usually the winner.
I’m not a connoisseur by any means, but… any good options that taste less like dirt while still being cheap / available in large quantities?
I buy the Aldi “Donut Shop Blend”, It’s the lightest on the roast scale of that brand. Dark roast coffee tastes like a dirty ashtray to me.
Hard to beat Costco prices. That said, try Cafe Bustelo, it might fit your needs nicely.
Cafe Bustelo
That’s my go to for cheap coffee.
Colectivo from Costco is my go-to, and every now and then I treat myself to a bag of locally roasted beans. Plus local coffee is one souvenir I always get on vacation no matter where I go.
Every so often Costco will have a single-origin Ethiopian that is really good. Been a couple years since they had it, though
Anything you make in a cheap filter drip coffee machine is going to have an upper bound of how well it can taste. It’s a convenient method to brew larger quantities of coffee at once, but not really an ideal way of getting the best tasting coffee.
You might want to try a more medium roast instead of a dark roast and see if that tastes less like dirt to you, but a lot of cheap coffee is going to be dark roast because it hides the taste of the (shitty) beans used.
if it’s pre-ground you’ve already given up any hope of meaningful improvement.
coffee beans gotta be used within minutes of being ground.
find a local roaster that has good light or medium roast of any variety, get a good grinder, and grind them fresh right when brewing.
also, side note: the lighter the roast, the more caffeine (by way of darker roasting destroying more caffeine)
As someone has said, pre ground is a losing battle and any coffee you buy from a shop where they don’t show the roast date (super markets etc) will also restrict you on good taste
However, you might have some luck adding salt to your brew to improve the taste. See https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PUWQQ-joKE
Chicory coffee is cheap and good.
Get beans! Preground is disgusting and also full of ground up roaches (no, really).
The bean version of anything ground fresh will be vastly superior than the preground version. That said, Coffee For Everyone has some decent bulk stuff that isn’t crazy expensive.
I used to stop by my former neighbour’s shop for flour ground right in front of me. Either the grinder discretely dispenses drugs in it or its just way better than whatever you buy in big stores.
If you have a local roaster, yeah, they’ll be better than grocery store beans. Still best if you get the beans and use a quality burr grinder though.
*tastes
I blame my phone. Fixed!
What kind of machine do you have rn?
No idea what the model is, but it’s one of those commercial sized ones with two carafes - one that it drips into, and another warming plate to swap with.
Aldi’s Beaumont Classic Roast is cheaper than CostCo’s options. It’s not too bad.
Check out Happy Mug. They roast the beans the same day you order it so it’s always fresh. It won’t be as cheap as Costco Folgers but it’s wayyy better. I like the Bear Blend, personally, for a classic cup with broad appeal
SF Bay, medium roast. grind daily for a pour over wfm.
I have found that grinding cheap coffee to a finer grind, often creates the taste illusion that it’s much higher quality.
My method with cheaper coffee is brew it stronger, but water back down to the normal concentration.
The biggest improvement would be to get your colleagues to agree to buy a grinder and write out a simple set of directions for the amount of beans to grind for each pot. Since this is just drip machine or a large percolator, the quality of the grinder is not hugely important like it would be for pour over or espresso. A basic Baratza Encore would be more than good enough.
Cafe Bustelo, Eight O’Clock Coffee, plus the Costco and Aldi brands mentioned by others should all be a big step up from pre-ground Folgers.
The key is to grind before each brew instead of using pre-ground.
I prowl the bargain shelves of all varieties of supermarkets for sale coffee: Sprouts, Grocery Outlet, Safeway, Walgreens, Target, etc.
Whole bean is preferred, but ground will also work.
My expectations are low, and I never feel like I’m getting ripped off.
