Why does most coffee you buy tastes like week old bong water?

worse than rocket science, it's an art.

but I know what ya mean, drives me insane.

lot of variables - operator, apparatus, bean, roast, grind, compression (tamping), milk, fat content, temperature (burnt?), % of froth, etc.

I drink double shot espresso's... working on the the theory they are the hardest to fuck up.

even still, when you get asked "will that be in a cup or a mug", you know you're in trouble.

Everyone needs a good barista, and a good barrister, in their life.

I'm caught between principle and good taste. I try not to frequent upmarket cafes that take themselves seriously cos it's my observation that these are the places surf shop employees go to work when they turn 18. The whole 'barista as a rock star' thing with personas as contrived as their gelled-up, gravity-defying hairstyles just grates. And if they make little leaf or heart shapes on the top of coffee froth then that's the game gone.

So I turn my back on those temples of pretension for a homely Ma & Pa cafe yet their brew is just two vile steps away from Blend 43. Ghastly stuff. It's a dilemma, yet when I find a good place I stick to it. And I tip.

I have to agree most cafes sell pretty poor coffee. Its not that hard to do well if the basics are followed. Funny thing is that if I get a poor coffee I never go back. On the flipside I will drive way out of my way to get a good coffee.

The other annoying thing for me is the price variation. The best coffee shops I know are also the cheapest by over a $1.00 a cup. Not sure why this would be.

I agree everyone needs a good barista, big hair or not, at least once a day.

coffee is for fags

One sugar or two Mrs. BP?

Nuthin like a coffee and a fag to start the day....

morning starter: industrial strength coffee, fresh donuts, and 12 hash bongs.

ahhh, those was the days.

I tease my mate who lives at Marion Bay that he cant get good coffee (or arthouse cinema) there.

He doesnt care...

(He had perfect 4' Willies to himself this morning. Perhaps that has something to do with it)

Bugger it. I am trying to upload a photo and have even opened a Flickr account and I have read about the image instructions but it don't seem to be working. Is there a step by step guide somewhere on this site?

Yeah sid ,the good old days- wake up , bang on kettle, jump back fence to check the rock, firing, mull up, run to dunny in contemplation of first bamboo inhalation, caters blend nescafe, 2 sugars, milk, in wetty, BAM, fall out front door and get barrelled. ah the memories.

Floyd, you'll need to store the image somewhere on the web - then simply hit the blue square bottom in the reply section - it'll drop some code on to the page which looks like this: [ img]https://[ /img]

(actually, the space in the '[ img]' and '[ /img]' tags doesn't actually exist - I had to put them in then to make it show)

Then all you do is replace the "https://" part with the actual URL of your image (which should start in https://, and end in .jpg).

Essentially, you're enclosing the picture's URL within some image tags [ img] and [ /img]. This tells the browser to display the image instead of the text.