I and my husband are coffee snobs. We buy only whole bean Starbucks and grind our beans for every pot. There is nothing like a good smooth coffee to get you going in the morning. I do agree that in order to judge a good coffee it must stand alone in order to taste the true flavor.

I don't drink coffee, but I do like tea, especially the orange spice herb tea.

And the chai lattes at Starbucks.

I've been drinking the Starbuck's House Blend and French Roast coffees for a couple years now. I get them in the whole bean bags, and have a grind & brew coffee maker. I ran out of the Starbucks, and made coffee with a preground [name removed to protect the innocent}] brand. The amount of caffeine in the [Dragnet] brand was high.

So I'm curious if this is something anyone else has experienced? I use the measurer from the grinder, and measure 5 scoops and make six cups of coffee. So by my standards I'm using *less* coffee then the package says, yet the ground coffee (non-Starbuck's) has way more caffeine then the whole bean coffee.

I don't drink coffee regularly but when I do I prefer a high quality brand such as Kona. I also prefer to have favored coffee such as a mocha or vanilla flavored coffee. I also enjoy a cold or hot spiced Chai tea occasionally.

I like Kona too. I think it's a little pricey for day to day drinking but enjoy it a couple times a year.

I worked in a restaurant as a kid, and they served Kona coffee as part of the meal. I really enjoyed it. A year or so after I started working there they switched to a canned liquid instant coffee that was awful.

I don't know why they switched, and can't think that the canned instant coffee would be cheaper except perhaps for less wasted coffee [With the Kona they had two urns with about 5 gallons (I'm honestly guessing the volume here: the machine was 2 1/2 feet tall and each tank was about 14" in diameter) in each urn so they wasted a few gallons each night.]