Coffee Life: Living with the Brain machine ☕

I bought this fancy coffee maker a couple months ago. It's called the OXO On Barista Brain 9 Cup Coffee Maker.

I've never had a coffee maker before, so I have no idea if it's worth it or if I was taken for a ride or what. If I had to guess I'd say it seems pretty good.

Basically what happened is I asked my pal @noface (he doesn't actually ever use Steemit 😡) if he had any suggestions regarding what I should look for in a coffee maker, and he briskly sent me a link. It was a link to a website who does reviews, and he seemed to believe in them and gave me like an aura of courage about it, like that I should just go with their recommendation.

Plus it's tagged as Amazon's Choice.

I don't know how the Amazon's Choice algorithm works, but I know Jeff Bezos is masterful at pleasing the customer (and that he probably doesn't want to let go of that), so I figure they won't let it be too far off, and so I raise the floor when I see that tag.

There's nothing more expensive than buying coffee out in the world at convenience stores or whatever. So it's easy to rationalize the luxury purchase when it's actually saving you money relative to what you're doing right now.

I began my new era of making my own coffee with Folgers.

It may have been true that it was the best part of waking up, but only by default.

I stopped using it as soon as I had a second coffee available, and I didn't finish it until it was my only option again.

There's nothing wrong with it. It's comfortably better than the coffee I was getting from 7-11, and I'll always look back fondly on the Folgers time, but there's nothing that good about it either.

Relative to buying coffee that's already made for you, every price point of ground coffee seems dirt cheap. So it's hard to not want to pay like $2 more for something considerably better.

Taste/Feel: D+
Price: $3.99
Value Adjusted Grade: C-

Next I tried a brand called Gevalia.

I have to say, it was everything I could want a coffee to be.

I say that with perhaps a charming naiveté of not having tried enough other coffees yet. But it really delivered. It tasted basically just as the packaging made me feel it was going to taste.

It was like I wanted it to be a flavor in my cake.

Taste/Feel: A
Price: $7.99
Value Adjusted Grade: A

Next, I tried a vanilla hazelnut from "Signature Select".

"Signature Select" is basically the store brand for Safeway/Von's/Albertson's (or here in New Hampshire, Shaw's). But they name it to give the appearance of not necessarily being a store brand.

I like store brands. You essentially just aren't paying for the marketing behind it. And while you may want to choose your battles, theoretically you should be able to get the same or similar quality for less.

And this one represented the store brands quite nicely. Solid coffee.

In general I'm a fan of both vanilla and hazelnut flavor, and so I'm tentative to give the coffee too much credit, if maybe I'd have a high opinion of any vanilla hazelnut you threw at me.

Still, it did its job and I rate it favorably.

Taste/Feel: B+
Price: $4.99
Value Adjusted Grade: A-

Finally, we have a Vienna roast from Allegro.

Allegro is a Whole Foods thing. Not sure if owned by Whole Foods or what, but it's like that's the one they want to sell to you if you walk the aisles there.

It's a poor idea to buy coffee from Whole Foods. Whole Foods is good if there are particular items that are hard to get elsewhere -- for me it's the assortment of weird vegan things. Or if paying more for their selection of produce is worth it to you. But for coffee (and generally all packaged, normal food items) you get a better selection with better prices elsewhere.

But Whole Foods is where I was, and coffee was on the list of things that I needed.

I had high hopes when I smelled it, but it didn't deliver.

It feels like decently good quality, and I don't ever shiver from a weird aftertaste or anything like that like I used to do in the 7-11 era.

I don't know how to describe notes and flavors or whatnot, so the best I can do is say it has maybe like 10% of the "7-11 coffee taste" going on, on top of a generally just okay or slightly above average but mostly flat and dry type of arrangement.

Taste/Feel: B-
Price: $8.99, but $11.99 when not on sale
Value Adjusted Grade: C+

We'll see what I buy next.

I have a feeling it might be a different flavor from Gevalia.

I'll probably start buying online too, so I can look at reviews and all the descriptions and whatnot. I'll update as there becomes more to report.