Is it worth paying extra for quality green tea and coffee?

People try to cover the obviousness of oral fixation by making the object of that fixation, trendy, sexy, manly, expensive, rare, etc.

This might explain the $400 crack pipe that I love to suck on while I post threads on Letsrun.

i like getting stuff done as cheaply and as efficiently as possible, without wrecking the planet or destroying someone's ability to earn a living and live their life.

That said, for green tea, i go with matcha in bulk, and get the culinary grade as opposed to ceremonial, because it is a fraction of the cost, though it is by all measures, much less refined and not as good. But good enough.

For coffee, I also buy that in bulk, but after trying many brands, I've settled on Equal Exchange Coffee, which helps out the coffee producers workers with Fairly Traded practices. It's good and it's my go-to coffee for a while now. Maybe a little more expensive than the swill I had been drinking, but it's for a good cause (and it's better).

For coffee there is a huge difference between the bottom shelf stuff and the mid-tier beans (starbucks, peets, etc ~$10/bag) anyone who can’t appreciate this has bad taste. Top tier stuff is only worth it if you have the right preparation.

I currently buy the mid-range and often wonder if I'm being a sucker. How good could these mid-range coffees be? Seems the quality would be the same with the grocery store brand.

HEB has their own brand of coffee that costs 10 cents less per ounce than Starbucks.

A couple of tips I learned is that what has a really big impact on the cup of brewed coffee is whether you start with ground coffee or grind your whole beans immediately before brewing. The latter is supposed to be noticeably better and fuller in taste.

Secondly, a little cheat thing I picked up is if a particular roast is at all bitter, as cheap roasts often are, you can add just a few grains of salt to the grinds when brewing or to the finished carafe, and that tends to neutralize or hide the bitterness. It takes very little salt, though, like maybe 10 grains per 4-cup pot. I've done that and it totally can save a bitter roast.

I know sht about tea but good coffee costs money.

Go to costco and buy Sbux French Roast. Its way less than the grocery store. Or SBux stores.

Also, surprisingly decent is Costco French roast if your local store has it.

Side note: If you put cream and/or sugar in your coffee, drink anything. You will be masking the goodness or badness at that point.

Side note 2: For some reason I find the Folgers concentrate my bagel store sells to be inexplicably acceptable. Its one of those machines that mixes some glop in a bag with hot water when you push a button. I saw them preloading the concentrate bag once...Folgers.

Its definitely NOT "good coffee" but for some reason I like it.

I’d rather pay a low price for slave-produced coffee than a high price for a completely ethical one.

As someone who has worked in a lot of coffee shops… I honestly dont feel like there is. I’ve drank some pretty terrible high grade coffee and some tasty cheap stuff. I’d prefer to go cheap, but my bf insists on buying spendy coffee. As others have mentioned, getting whole bean makes a difference, as does using a burr grinder