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Unless and until we figure out how to prevent these little nuggets of plastic and steel from ending up in landfills and pacific garbage gyres, this needs to stop. These things not only generate an incredibly poor facimile of tea and coffee, but they cant be easily recycled. Vendors have also explored the concept of typing these things to DRM, meaning your coffee becomes a proprietary experience thats determined solely by a manufacturing conglomerate.

Just because we can, doesnt mean we should. Take a step back and -- if youre in the united states-- try brewing coffee with an american made coffee maker from Chemex. the thing is a work of art that lets you brew what you want, how you want. And at the end of the brewing the leftovers are completely biodegradeable.

Caffeine is bad m'kay...

Wait, what? Now, sure, pre-packaged drinks with corn syrup are bad but plain ole' caffeine? I mean, I've moved on from Coke to fresh roasted coffee, just ground before making a pot. Now, I have reduced my coffee intake to just a quart a day, black, so I should be doing ok, right? Don' take mah caffeine away. How am I supposed to function on 4 hours sleep a night?

One word: Chemex.

Two thumbs up for the Chemex. I've been using one for about four years and love the coffee it brews. Very smooth flavor. My second choice is a Bialetti stove-top bomb. Those are also nice, but make a much stronger brew.

I grew up with a Chemex in the house and now own one myself, nothing beats it for flavor imho if brewed correctly per the instructions.

The paper filters for it are offered in natural and white(bleached), but I don't know why they offer bleached filters, just seems crazy to me.

http://www.chemexcoffeemaker.com/

Each person has his or her own personal styles. Experiment. Get variety packs. Freshness matters for some people -- roast within a year of picking, grind within 2 weeks of roasting, brew within 2 hours of grinding. Personally, I don't follow those at all -- I care, but not that much. Without getting into superiority contests, some people just don't care -- my mother prefers instant Folgers to anything I drink.

I prefer Green Mountain Coffee to anything else I've consumed. I've had everything my grocery stores in three states and two countries will sell me. Lately, I've preferred lighter roasting over darker roasts, with my recent favorite flavor being Green Mountain's Ethiopian organic.

I don't like the metal or plastic flavors that many coffee makers instill, so I've been enjoying a Chemex coffee maker since 2001. Simple, gravity drip. There's some science behind it that may as well be snake oil, but I really like it.

I went to a "coffee class" when I was living in Japan. The instructor swore the best way to make coffee was to drip it. You had to pour just a little bit into the ground beans, to get it to bloom. Then you could pour in slowly as long as the grounds were floating. You don't let it fill up, you certainly don't let the water get to the edge of the filter, just a slow but constant flow. Before all the water finishes dripping, you remove it from your drink. If done properly, you can see a dry ring of unused grounds around the edge of the filter. Otherwise, all the bitterness is released and flows to the coffee. I think he was crazy and he couldn't pass a double blind test.

My last coffee preference -- if you're in Japan and get coffee in a can from a vending machine, Boss makes the... least bad.