Drinkable Cheap Coffee

I actually do know what good coffee tastes like.

So, before I write about cheap coffee, I want to state that I am actually rather picky about the coffee I drink. In fact, when I owned a natural foods store about 30 miles south of Iowa City, Iowa, I carried and served coffee from Cafe del Sol, which was probably Iowa’s first premier coffee roaster.

I had a friend who knew the owner and arranged for me to visit. The owner, Stephen Dunham, gave me a tour of his facility just outside Iowa City in nearby Coralville and explained the virtues of his roasting process. He explained that the most common type of coffee roaster uses a heated metal drum to roast the beans. The hot metal drum rotates and the beans scorch against the inside of the drum as they tumble. It’s a closed system and the chaff that breaks off the beans as they tumble can ignite and form a kind of tar on the beans. When people complain about the bitter taste and acidity of coffee, they are actually describing an undesirable byproduct of the roasting process.

Cafe del Sol uses a system that roasts the coffee using hot air that is forced up through the beans and has an exhaust system that sucks out any chaff that breaks off from the beans. The result is a cleaner product that showcases the bean’s true character.

When I’m working with fine quality beans, I use a burr grinder to grind them and I prefer using the Melitta cone filter method to brew coffee with water that is just coming to a boil. I’m quite partial to Kenya AA and Ethiopian Yirgacheffe.

So, just to reiterate, I actually do know a thing or two about good coffee.

But I also know when I’m overpaying for a mediocre product and there’s a lot of mediocre coffee masquerading as premium out there. After staying overnight in a house with only decaf, I happened to stumble across an ultra-cheap coffee combo that I think is perfectly drinkable for every day use. I’ve certainly paid a lot more for a lot worse coffee.

Dollar Tree sells a six-ounce bag of a medium roast called Breakfast Blend and a six-ounce bag of espresso called Café El Morro, each for a dollar. Each one is okay to drink if you’re in a pinch, but blended together they’re surprisingly decent.

I use 21 grams of coffee to make a pot that comes up to the eight cup line on my carafe. The two six-ounce bags blended together equals 340.194 grams. At 21 grams per pot, that means I can get 16.1997 pots out $2.00 worth of coffee. There are quite a few grocery store chains that are selling 12 oz. bags of their store-brand coffee for about $10.00 that do not taste nearly as good as my Dollar Tree hack.

I figure I can make a year’s supply of drinkable coffee for about $45.00. I could easily spend $225.00 for a year’s supply of coffee that is so not worth it.

If I just need some go-juice to get started in the morning before work I’ll be perfectly happy with my Dollar Tree blend. Then I can splurge for a truly premium bag of freshly roasted single-bean coffee and savor it when I have the time to really appreciate it.