Don't Wanna Work For It

A friend asked me recently if I were a coffee snob.

I said that I buy single-origin light roast beans from a local roaster, grind only as much as is needed each morning to make two cups of pour-over coffee in my Chemex. Did that make me a coffee snob?

To which the friend said, yes, duh, that’s, like, the definition of what a coffee snob is.

But even as a coffee snob, I’ll tell you something: there are days when I just don’t have time, days when I’m tired, when I’ve got something to do, when I’ve got a job to attend to beyond being, basically, a faucet. In other words, there are days when I don’t want to stand around in my pajamas slowly pouring hot water over freshly-ground coffee. There are days when I want to press a button and have coffee for the next couple hours.

Luckily, there’s a product that can do this! It’s called, ‘literally any basic-ass coffee machine.’

But the problem is, most coffee machines do not make good coffee. They dribble some not-hot-enough water on some some grounds, and what makes it through drips into a pot, where it’s kept at about 600 degrees by a way-too-hot burner, and the result is a steaming cup of char.

(Again, I am a coffee snob.)

In other words, if you want a machine where you touch a button and enjoy delicious coffee a few minutes later, you can’t just buy the first Mr. Coffee you see. You need something a little fancy. Like this Ninja Auto-iQ Coffee Bar. It’ll brew 43oz of coffee and then keep it hot for 2 hours. But it’s not a one-trick pony. You can also use it to brew richer coffee, coffee that holds up to icing, and even something called “Speciality Brew” which is “a coffee extract that, like espresso, you can use to create coffeehouse-style hot and cold layered beverages.” And if you want some of those layers to be frothed milk, it comes with something for that too.

Will it unlock the same rich flavor notes as brewing pour-over coffee? Maybe. Maybe not. (And maybe that’s not the kind of coffee you like.) What it will do is brew a lot of good, rich coffee that’ll keep you caffeinated all day.