Last weekend I attended a wonderful Interintellect Salon on Talking about Money, where we talked about everything from the philosophy of money, to why there seems to be so much financial illiteracy, to the credit card ecosystem, to the US Tax Code.
A recurring point was that good financial advice can be hard to find, and you might not even know where to start looking. And personal finance has been something I’ve wanted to write about for a while now.
So here I am. This is the first post in a series combining personal finance and food, where I’ll go over some meals I make at home that I particularly enjoy with respect to: Taste, Time, and Cost.
Let’s start with what some consider to be a full breakfast: Coffee
As I’m nearing the 1y mark of working from home, there’s a lot that I’m thankful for (among them: having a stable job, being able to work from home, being generally ok with long periods of self-isolating). One thing I do miss is grabbing coffee with friends, both for the friends and for the coffee.
Now that I’m by myself, I’m far less motivated to drop by a coffee shop for a cup. So I decided to set up my own personal coffee bar for pour-over coffee.
Here’s what that looks like:
I love coffee! It brings me joy.
Making pour-over takes me about 10 minutes:
The majority of the up-front cost is in the equipment to make pour-over coffee:
Total cost: $243 (or $148 without the grinder and caddy)
While there’s a fairly hefty up-front cost, I’m hoping to make coffee for years to come. So I look at the cost of my equipment from a cost-per-cup perspective instead:
| Equipment | Cost | Est. lifespan (y) | Est. yield (cups) | Cost per cup |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Chemex | $ 40.00 | 5 | 1040 | $ 0.04 |
| Filters (100c) | $ 20.00 | 1 | 200 | $ 0.10 |
| Grinder | $ 60.00 | 3 | 624 | $ 0.10 |
| Scale | $ 13.00 | 3 | 624 | $ 0.02 |
| Kettle | $ 75.00 | 3 | 624 | $ 0.12 |
| Chemex caddy | $ 35.00 | 5 | 1040 | $ 0.03 |
| Total | $ 243.00 | - | - | $ 0.41 |
I drink coffee 4 times a week on average, so in one year I’ll drink around 208 cups. And I expect the equipment I bought to last at least a few years, depending on the piece.
That brings the equipment cost to: $0.41 per cup.
I buy whole beans and grind them myself, as this tends to minimize loss of flavour. And I find grinding is a relaxing part of the morning ritual of making coffee.
As for what kind of beans to buy, there are tons of varieties and flavour profiles that I won’t get into. I’ll primarily be looking at the cost, which can vary from:
| Beans | Bag Cost | Bag Size (g) | # Cups | Cost per cup |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Costco Bulk | $ 39.99 | 2722 | 181.47 | $ 0.22 |
| Starbucks x Costco | $ 20.99 | 1130 | 75.33 | $ 0.28 |
| Grocery Brand | $ 10.00 | 340 | 22.67 | $ 0.44 |
| Boutique (e.g. Sightglass) | $ 19.00 | 340 | 22.67 | $ 0.84 |
To normalize and compare costs, I took 15g of beans to equal 1 cup of coffee (15g produces 240ml of coffee at the 16:1 ratio of water to beans for pour-over).
That means the cost in beans alone can vary from $0.22 to $0.84 per cup.
As a side note, after looking at the unit price of some of these deals I wonder what the margin on coffee beans is. The 6 lbs of beans at $40 comes out to $0.22 for 15g after all.
Some quick googling is showing ~10% margin in some cases, but I couldn’t find much more info.
Meaning the margin on these 340g-for-$19 beans is quite boutique in comparison ($0.84 per cup vs $0.22 per cup).
I drink my coffee with cream (yes, heavy cream) and sugar. And while the cost of sugar is negligible, the cost of heavy cream is not:
A 236ml carton costs $2.49 and lasts me about 8-10 cups, which comes out to $0.31 per cup. That’s more than the cost of some beans!
Add all of the pieces together and one cup of coffee comes out to: $0.94 to $1.56. (Surprisingly, the cost in equipment spreads out a lot over time, and the cost in beans can really drive up the total.)
That $4 cappuccino from Blue Bottle isn’t looking so egregious now, is it?
I like the amount of control I get over various parts of the process with pour-over. But there are tons of other ways to make coffee at home. Some notable ones:
Graham Stephan’s $0.20 Iced Coffee - Graham uses a normal coffee machine, a big bottle of creamer, and a much lower beans-to-cup ratio (~5g per cup to make 66 cups from a 340g bag).
Cometeer - this company essentially sells liquid-nitrogen-frozen espresso shots you can store in your freezer, just add water or milk. Interestingly, their frozen coffee pucks are $2 per serving, which makes them not that much more expensive than my pour-over setup. Here’s my referral link if you want to give them a try.
Drop a reply, or just come say hi here!
If you’d like to support me, you can buy me 3-5 coffees!