this post was submitted on 22 Dec 2025
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Incidentally, I've also taken a deep dive into the world of specialty coffee. I've come to the conclusion, that if I want to drink something delightful, coffee will end up being about 5 times more expensive (as in €/l).
I know it's not a fair comparison, since the experience is vastly different, but if you look at the numbers, that's what you'll get. This means that if you spend the same amount on good coffee and good tea, and drink the same volume of both every day, you'll run out of coffee long before you're even half way through your tea stockpile. In reality though, I wouldn't drink a liter of coffee, but I certainly can drink a liter of tea every day. The difference in expenses is significant anyway.
However, if you think about café pricing, that's a whole different ballgame. You aren't just paying for the beverage. If you think about it that way, you can definitely drink really expensive specialty coffee at home, and it's still going to be cheaper. If you switch to tea, the difference gets even bigger. A single cup of Lipton at a café will cost you about as much as a 60 g bag of decent supermarket sencha. Drink that at home and you'll have enough for several weeks.
I haven't done such a deep dive, but I have noticed specialty coffee can get real expensive. There's a local roaster who sells some really good beans, but it's the sort of thing I only buy occasionally as a treat, as opposed to the tea I drink pretty much daily.
And yes, the cafe isn't really a fair comparison, since you're paying for the staff and the building and such, but for me, when I'm at work I have a choice between grabbing a drink from one of the cafes on the block, or putting on the kettle. It's about the same amount of time and effort either way, so I think it makes sense to compare them.
When I visit a café, I intend to chill out a while, so I think I'm also paying for the atmosphere, seats, convenience etc. If you're just grabbing a cup on the way to work, you get exactly zero atmosphere, so why pay extra for it. Since that takes about as much time and effort as brewing your own coffee, the price difference is just crazy. Why pay more for a paper cup of mediocre dark roast, when you could pay less for a delightful cup of light roast with fruity flavors. The kind of specialty coffee I used to drink, each cup would cost about half of what you would pay at a café.
Once I learned what to look for in a cup of coffee, it ruined café experiences for me. They just don't have anything good. It's either medium roast or dark roast. Cafe latte still works, because it covers the bitter taste of dark roast espresso so well.