The thing with beans is that you can keep them fresh. Ground coffee starts to go stale as soon as it's ground, even if you keep it in an air-tight container. With beans, you can keep them in the freezer and just grind enough at a time for the amount of coffee you want to make. It does make a difference.

I nearly always use the IKEA restaurant blend. They sell it in the "weird Swedish sh!t" shop near the checkouts.

I think it's better to not freeze them but rather just buy in smaller quantities and store in a cool dry place. But I do agree that coffee tastes much better when it is freshly ground.

French Press makes great tasting coffee - but my problem with the French Press is that the nature of the method is that you do get some grounds, dust, debris or whatever in the cup of coffee. For me, that gives a disturbing aftertaste that lasts for hours. My preferred method for making the coffee is to use a filter cone & filter paper, pouring the water in by hand from the kettle. I filter it straight into a vacuum jug - keeps it drinking temperature and fresh for a while (although I always drink my fill within ten minutes of making it, my wife drinks it over the course of an hour or two.)

Am I the only one who's over the idea of a British coffee snob?

The coffee I had in England the couple of times I was there was pretty bad.

I love those. I had one years ago and I don't know why I haven't gone back to that method. What kind do you have? Where'd you get it?

I think we brought it from England, which means we've had it 20+ years... pretty sure it is German.

Join Gevalia and try a few

Cheers. I'm sure I can find one online.

Actually it's not bad compared to Starbucks

I'm not a massive coffee drinker, but I really like the Average Joes, cheap stuff from Trader Joes, and also the Ethiopian beans they sell.

http://www.newenglandcoffee.com Nothing special, but it's not bad

http://www.cariboucoffee.com/ That's quite nice too

Probably not much help as I can't remember the name, but Wholefoods have a local coffee that gets roasted in Boston, black/gold/silver packet, and the local place often has it on sale and that's very good and pretty cheap.

The folks have a massive one, which is great, generally...it's the second one they have as the first finally died after about 10-15 years.

Problem with it, it's crap when making 1 cup...it really needs to make 2.5 cups or more at a minimum to get the best out of it .

I live with a coffee nerd. My husband buys raw beans and roasts them at home in his roaster. He researches beans and can tell you the difference between a bean from Kenya and a bean from Sumatra, its quite disturbing. His love and knowledge of coffee is encyclopedic (and second only to his love and knowledge of William Shatner.) So I'm gonna pass on the tidbits from him I've learned over the years.

The reason people prefer french press coffee over drip maker coffee is that in a drip maker, the water does not get hot enough to bring the grounds up to the correct temperature to achieve maximum flavor. Also keeping coffee on a hotplate and drinking it after its been there 20 minutes will affect the taste and the flavor.
The reason so many coffee snobs hate Starbucks is because Starbucks traditionally buy cheap beans and then burn them in their roasters, then sell it off as a "dark blend coffee" coffee nerds can taste a burnt bean a mile away. Hence why many of them prefer Dunkin Donuts coffee because D&D don't burn their beans.

Buy a grinder, if you're serious, buy a burr grinder with a hopper. Example Keep ground coffee in the freezer and use a coffee measuring spoon and a french press and half and half. There are essays written on why this is the best way to do but I can't remember right now. I have to say though, as someone who isn't that bothered about coffee, the coffee I've been drinking since I married the aforementioned nerdy boy has been like apples and oranges with run of the mill coffee.

You can get an O.K cup-o-joe with cheap beans. Its more to do with the method. French presses call for a fairly coarse ground and good timing but it's not complicated.

My method at the moment using a regular blade grinder involves the following:

Boil kettle, when it clicks off start a two minute timer, grind the beans, how long they grind depends on the size of the bean, normally about 15 short jabs of the grind button with the present Ruta Maya Mexican coffee. When the two minute timer is up I add the water, its just below boiling point, stir until you get the 'brown cream' on the top of the beans and then set a 3 minute timer, stir half way through if I've not been rugby tackled by the little one then stir again when the 3 minutes are up, then slowly push down.

Zing.

If I had my way I'd have burr grinder rather than the current blade grinder, burr grinders give you less powder, also, one of the french presses I have has a few extra doo-dads that stop most of the sediment getting in.

This one

It really doesn't take long to get it, and once you do most other coffee with the exception of one from a good espresso machine taste like shit. Drip machines take a lot of cleaning to keep a good consistent taste. I think the last one we had got us slowly used to coffee that tasted worse each time we used it as it was so damn hard to clean the reservoir properly, the french press is a quick rinse and its done and even the cheap ones are good.

Yes, the water in a drip machine is not hot enough.. however you can manually pour boiling water straight from your electric kettle through a filter cone/paper filter. I have several such plastic filter cones (some Mr. Coffee style, some Melitta style) that I've saved from defunct drip machines.

As someone mentioned earlier, another totally different way of making good coffee is using a stovetop macchinetta (Bialetti or similar.) This makes a superb satisfying cup of coffee. But, as someone mentioned, beware of potentially fatal accidents.

Or Send me £20 I'll send some Nescafe