With that headline, you might think this was about homebrewing or beer. I wish! But it’s about coffee.

But first. Early this year or very late last year, my wife and I were doing some post-Christmas shopping. It’s the best. Much smaller crowds, all sorts of things being sold off really cheap. We got a set of king-size flannel sheets with a Christmas tree print (that’s why it was deeply discounted) for $30 or $35. A very sturdy sheet pan for $9.

At the supermarket, we got a whole leg of lamb—just packaged that morning!—for $2.99 a pound. We threw in a couple of prime ribs for about half off. A little side-note there: beef, properly sealed and packaged, will last at least a year in the freezer with no loss of taste or quality. These prime ribs are vacuum-sealed. Guess what we’re having for Christmas dinner?

But most impressive, we were browsing Bed Bath & Beyond (before it closed) and found their discount shelf. Candles, possibly broken trinkets, mugs, kitchen gadgets. Eh. A baby Crock Pot without the box for $20. (Doesn’t it sell for less than that new?) Then I spotted a coffee maker. A weird-looking contraption, but not a regular coffee pot. No box. Price tag? $20, same as the Crock Pot. Brand? Zwilling.

Zwilling is the high-end company that makes the very good German knives, and all of their stuff is pricey. Their appliances are probably not as good as their knives, but they’re definitely good. And how pricey? I excitedly looked up the coffee maker model online, and there it was on the Zwilling website. About $180! Somebody working in the back at Bed Bath & Beyond had just been sticking $20 on all the open-box appliances. I half expected the thing not to work, but it did. It was basically new with the exception of the box.

But I didn’t test it out. I didn’t even know how to use it! It had simple but somewhat complicated controls: a single knob with a lot more functions than you’d expect a coffee maker to have. It also had a “bloom” feature, which pre-moistens the grounds and supposedly helps to extract more flavor. So we gave it to my parents as a kind of post-Christmas gift, and my dad replaced his old Gevalia coffee pot—which, because it’s quite simple and still works, we took instead.

All of which is to say, when we visit my parents and my dad makes coffee with that weird Zwilling pot, it’s basically the best coffee anywhere. He uses Costco-brand whole beans, which are roasted by Starbucks. These are the measurements he uses: the cup is based on the cup volume of the Zwilling pot, the coffee is either the machine’s recommendation or his own just-right amount. It’s 125ml of water and seven grams of coffee per cup. It’s robust and almost opaque—as in, you can’t just see through the liquid like it’s coffee-colored water. I use the same measurements on the old pot we now have. It’s not quite as good as the Zwilling—maybe the “bloom” really works—but it’s still better than pretty much any coffee shop.

I find that interesting. Using higher-quality supermarket beans and a consistent ratio, you get really good coffee. And for an absolute fraction of the price. Even if you splurge on heavy cream. We’ve gotten very thin and watery/milky coffee drinks at multiple Starbucks stores. At the coffee shop where I sit and work, I find that the regular drip coffee never tastes quite the same: you’ll get it weaker or stronger, or a touch more bitter, because of the water/coffee ratio, and maybe the roasting time. It’s one of these coffee roasteries, and the beans are for sale for something like $18 per pound.

Yes, when a cup is made perfectly, it’s very good. But I wonder if the factory efficiency and consistency of Starbucks’ roasting operation—the Costco beans my dad buys are about $6 a pound—just beats the artisan quality but the lack of consistency and years and years of experience. I’ve found the same thing with salami—I’ve never been wowed by any of the newer craft-charcuterie producers. And a Sierra Nevada is still one of the best beers you can get.

There’s a lot of learning by doing in making things well, and what these corporate, mass-produced products do is let the customer enjoy the benefits of the company’s learning-by-doing process for cheap.

I’ve had this discussion with people over whether, as an urbanist, I should go to coffee shops and restaurants and support the kinds of businesses that help neighborhoods and cities thrive. I understand that. I like to do that. But it’s hard when your budget is limited, and you can do better at home. It reminds me of something my best friend asked me once: are there stores you like to see in towns that you never actually go in?

Yes. I guess there are. And I do like to try coffee shops, if only to compare them to each other. But I usually don’t expect them to exceed what that Bed Bath & Beyond post-Christmas deal can do.

Related Reading:

The Craft Meat Revolution?

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The Best Steak

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