Sorry, it doesn’t taste good. i think that’s why most people who drink it bury it in sugar, caramel and chocolate. I love the taste of coffee (coffee ice cream is one of my favorites) and I drink coffee a ton every day but every time I have had Starbucks (which admittedly is not often) I regret it because it just tastes bitter and burnt and gross.
Do you like it? Am I missing something? Or is it just convenient because it’s ubiquitous?
They do have good cake and cookies, I will say that. But the coffee is barely drinkable.
A counter-theory is that Starbucks has intentionally searched for a blend of coffees which are undrinkable if you don’t add milk, sugar, and a crapload of flavorings. However, once you add those flavorings, it’s kind of nice. The coffee, being relatively undrinkable, is remarkably cheap for them to buy in bulk. What you’re really paying for is milk and a teeny bit of flavoring.
I, however, like Starbucks coffee, if I have to buy something somebody else made. Peet’s is undrinkably strong in spite of the hippie cachet it tries to carry, and the local chain, Caribou, refuses to give their coffees names that make any sense (“Obsidian”. What the hell does that taste like? Where is it from?)
I love Starbucks coffee. Granted, I add some cream, but I don’t add sugar or flavorings. My favorite is their Caffè Verona dark roast.
The alternative here in New England is Dunkin’ Donuts, where there is a location every 100 feet, it seems. Dunkin’ Donuts coffee tastes like bland, coffee-flavored dishwater, IMHO.
Starbucks is my go-to coffee on road trips through those countless lifeless cookie cutter American towns. Reliably drinkable if you just add enough milk. Other than that, no use for it. I don’t take sugar or flavoring in my caffeine.
I fully endorse the OP. Starbucks coffee tastes like someone poured the contents of a well-used ashtray into the coffee grounds before the coffee was made.
That’s exactly what I’ve noticed. I only get coffee there when I have no other choice, and whenever I do I think it tastes burnt. Do they over-roast or something?
They get the same mediocre beans that are used for canned ground coffee and then roast the shit out of them to cover of the lack of actual flavor. Starbucks is a “coffeehouse” in name only; what they sell is sugar and dairy additives with some barely detectable coffee flavoring.
I may also be bitter because a Starbucks replaced the bar where I literally spent hundreds of hours working on unsolicitied proposals for various space weather surveillance and interplanetary communications systems. But I’m not biased; Starbucks coffee is objectively terrible.
Their coffee is distinct, hard to duplicate, much like you can not make a M-D’s hamburger at home. It is not my favorite, but I will sometimes chose them when I want to get a cup of joe I that I know will be up to a certain standard. At least I know I will get a halfway decent cup of coffee.
While not bad, it is also not good, somewhere in between.
I’m not going to defend it. But I do enjoy the atmosphere at some of the “after dark” locations, and as long as I have some half and half to put in it, it’s drinkable enough. Though I’m also not against a nice dark chocolate mocha from time to time. I guess my palate isn’t so discerning.
The first time I had Starbucks was one early morning when I had run out of my regular brand in the truck and had spent the night in a service plaza on the Ohio Turnpike. I got a cup,black, to go, got in the truck and headed down the road. After I got to speed and easing into my day I took my first ever sip of this coffee that so many people had raved about. Absolutely undrinkable. Bitter and just plan terrible taste. I chalked it up to Turnpike plaza poor quality food and drink like I had experienced many times in the past.
A couple months later I was making a delivery in Seattle about a half block from a Starbucks and thought, hay their home, they probably do it right. The girl ask three times what additives I wanted and seemed both shocked and insulted I wanted it black. I got back to the truck, took a sip and found out why they have all that foo foo surgery stuff to put in it.
I wispered an apology to the folks I had cussed in absentia that morning in Ohio.
It certainly is true that Starbucks is determinedly middlebrow, where downscale people can purchase 5 dollars of sophistication, and the trendy can slum it. And it certainly is true that the prototypical Starbucks customer isn’t a guy getting a cup of black coffee, but a soccer mom getting a venti caramel frappuccino. If you just wanted a cup of coffee why’d you go to a fricken Starbucks then? That’s not what Starbucks is for.
I drink coffee black, and I haven’t found Starbucks to taste burnt since they changed the house blend to the Pike Place blend several years ago. I don’t seek them out, but I find myself at a Starbucks once or twice a month to meet potential clients or current clients. They run a fine company, they treat their employees well, they don’t kick me out the occasional time I forget to order something and just use their space as a meeting space, and I generally enjoy their coffee.
Starbucks coffee isn’t especially good, although I’m not convinced it’s worse than the average cuppa joe, either. You can get better from some of the fast food places, but then again, not everything is open early and late and has locations everywhere either.
I like the idea of having a place to relax and slow down a little bit; I just don’t like coffee. I do go into Starbucks on occasion and have a hot chocolate, but their hot chocolate isn’t all that great either; too much foam and never mixed well enough so the chocolate is always settled in the bottom of the cup.
I get a flat white about three times a week. It’s my favorite coffee drink out there. Their bakery items are so-so, but I do like the Bantam Bagels and their bistro boxes.
I’ve seen the words “burnt” and “ashtray” bandied around this thread. I came in here to bandy those words myself.
I’ve had a gift card to Starbucks in my wallet for over a year now with $25 on it. If I ever end up using it, it’ll only be because I’ve given in to eating a lot of lemon cake.