please empty your brain below

One thing I learned from being a higher-than-normal trained Barista with a well known chain is that most people can't tell the difference between good and bad coffee.

In fact, some of them even ask for things like "a latte with half a shot in it", which is basically just warm milk.

Once in a while someone would ask for an espresso, and you could actually deliver them an awesome cup of coffee. But most of them just wanted the milk.
It could be that so many people are getting their news online now that it is only the extra income from the coffee that is keeping the kiosk open. If that is the case you should be gratefull for the coffee. We could be getting a post about how you used to get your newspaper from a kiosk by the station but it is now shut so you have to go to a shop 5 minutes walk away in the opposite direction.
My thoughts exactly. Also, it seems impossible to get a decent cup of tea out anywhere these days unless you go to a proper old fashioned caff, which is not something my latte quaffing colleagues would be up for. I baulk at paying two quid for a 2p teabag in a pint of hot water which someone has the nerve to call a pot of tea. I have started demanding an additional teabag at no extra cost, on the grounds that if they are advertising tea, they should be serving tea, not faintly coloured hot water. So far my success rate has been 50%.
Old fashioned caff is indeed the best place for tea. Bonus points if it comes out of a giant pot that's been stewing for hours.

It's a pity that only a few caffs make a decent coffee though. At least in my local they weren't offended when I started to give fairly strict directions about how I like it. But they're nice like that, and that's why I go there. As dg says, I could've made it at home. (Except that I spent my morning making and drinking a cup of tea and now I need a coffee to keep me awake on the train!)
*wonders how the world would function these days if coffee were banned*

(another non-coffee drinker who'd rather have a good holiday every year for the same price that some pay for designer coffee every day)
I must admit, 18 years or so ago when I first started drinking coffee (coincidentily, around the time I graduated, and strted working!), I quite happily made to with Maxwell House or Nescafe from the office tea/coffee club catering pack. But slowly I graduated to premium coffee, like Gold Blend, and then even more advanced instants.

...but one day I discovered real filter coffee, which satisfied me for a while, but then freshly ground coffee made an apperance in my life, and I progressed further into the realm of coffee perfection.

The problem is, once you've made the jump to the next level, there is no going back, the previous stages are nowhere near as tasty.

Although I do like a good freshly ground coffee, I almost never feel the need to pay for a cup of coffee in the street, I'm too sensible to waste money like that - plus the machine at work does a great cup for free!
Instant coffee should be banned on the grounds of good taste. It is AWFUL. Who invented it anyway and did they get a prison sentence? I have even been known to stoop to drinking tea if the only other option was instant. Give me a good 'flat white' (it's Aussie speak for a cup of coffee that is something like 1/3 coffee and 2/3 milk, thus stronger than a latte but more milky than a Macchiato). And by good I mean good. None of this Nero or Starbucks rubbish, but a good flat white from a real artisan barista. Not too hot, not too cold, not too milky, good crema and definitely with fresh, full fat milk (non-homogenised for preference). I do make my own at home with a stove-top espresso (using freshly ground coffee) btw.
It's possible to enjoy both 'real' coffee and instant coffee. It's just that you have to think of instant coffee as a completely different drink from coffee. After all, apple juice would be revolting if the aim was to produce a decent orange juice...
i discovered in Walthamstow the other day, a Colombian restauran/cafe, that for half the price of one of your chain Coffee stores, does the more exquisite tasting coffee i've ever experienced. I don't think i've have a chain-store coffee since.

mind you, i was in an 'Eat' last night, and i got *two* teabags in my large tea when I ordered it. i as impressed by that.
I do not drink coffee. The nearest station to me has 3 places for buying coffee. One is the newspaper counter, which also sells hot food and sandwiches.This is before the ticket barrier. After the barrier on the platform there is a rival outfit specializing in coffee. It is cheaper to buy coffee from the newspaper shop, but I imagine that for coffee connoisseurs the platform vendor sells a more palatable brand, else I cannot see any other reason to pay more from them.
The paperstand also sells tea, but it is the tea bag and hot water type. I do like tea from a nicely stewed teapot as of old days, but even the working mens cafes often serve teabag tea noways. There is a Starbucks and a Costa about five minutes walk away from the station, and a McDonalds about 3 minutes away. So no need to go thirsty as long as you have some money.
At home I use Redbush or green tea, with the occasional decaffeinated regular tea.
I do buy 2 newspapers each morning.
Mainly for the crosswords. If I get some free ones as well thats a bonus, although the Metro has no crossword, so I prefer City AM or the Evening Standard.
Yeeuw!

Buying drinks at a station kiosk... how common :(

Get a motorbike and you need never use crappy public transport again
Nothing wrong with teabag tea as long as there's enough tea in it, and it's decent quality, and - another thing frequently overlooked - it's made with freshly boiling water.
Another bugbear of mine are those pots with a sort of sieve for loose tea in the middle, stuffed so full it can't circulate or even get wet. I'm also old fashioned enough to think that when you buy a pot of tea, at least in a supposedly 'proper' tea shop you should get hot water too, to top it up after you've had a cup.
Oh, and don't get me started on those big wide flat cups that make your tea go cold faster than you can drink it.
I actually think most tea is sold by the same people who install next train indicator boards.
Tea bags should banned. Putting a tea bag in a cup, even at home, and pouring boiling water on it is a disgrace to the great British institution that is tea. Buy loose tea, get a teapot and make real tea.

I never buy tea in restaurants, cafes or anywhere else as it's always a teabag in a cup. A disgrace.

I might manage a crap cup of coffee though as I don't feel so offended by it.
+1 on the tea-in-a-caff comments. The Regency Cafe (on Regency St SW1), near my office, is somewhere I would go out of my way to get tea from - it's just perfect, and only 90p. Could live off the stuff.
When a Starbucks opened up near my house I did expect to suddenly see hoards of caffeine addicts parading up the road to the station with their white cups. Strangely it never happened.

When a wine bar at the station decided to try and tap in to the commuter breakfast market, their morning opening lasted a month. I rarely see anyone on the Northern Line with a coffee in the morning. Maybe we all have more sense than money :)

But what I love is the coffee zombies going on about how coffee wakes you up in the morning; gives you a perk. No it doesn't. It just puts you back to the level you would be on if you didn't drink so much coffee. The same level I'm on every morning.

I do drink coffee - one instant first thing, four from the Nespresso machine at work during the day. But I mostly drink decaf (max one caffeinated coffee a day). You can get some nice decafs. And you don't get that awful caffeine addiction, nor the problem that you can't survive the commute to work.
This coffee buying is nothing to do with needing a drink. It appears nowadays that one has to walk down the street holding a cup up in one hand because it is the 'fashion'. We even get pictures on the news of educated people who are photographed walking to the High Court clutching a cup of coffee in their hand.
Unless they are sponsored by the shop providing the coffee this seems a particularly futile exercise.
Might I just speak up for the time-pressed real coffee drinkers? It's a bit of a faff making one cup of real, freshly-ground coffee in the morning before setting out. I don't really want to be drinking it (or spilling it) on my 15-minute walk to the station, I don't want to drink luke-warm coffee once I get there, and I have enough to carry that adding a dirty mug to the load is a minor imposition. I am not a banker, but I'm well-enough paid that I can afford to pay someone else to make me a decent coffee at the station. The paper cup is biodegradable and I put it in the appropriate bin: not ideal I grant you, but I can't save the earth on my own. You'll be pleased to know, DG, that my coffee vendor doesn't sell papers, so I only hold up other coffee addicts.
Is your kiosk selling Fairtrade coffee, I wonder?

We have a vendor called 'Frothy Coffee' on our station. I tried the cappuccino once - it was basically warm milk with some cuckoo spit on top.

I'm not one of those people who is snobbish about instant coffee. Instant coffee to me is, basically, a coffee-flavoured hot drink.
This might upset pure coffee addicts. About 45 years ago (unlike now I did drink coffee then)a neighbour of mine used to make coffee which to me tasted nice. Looking back it was the bottle sold "Camp" coffee, to which she added evaporated milk to!. I think Camp coffee brand is a coffee and chicory mixture and is still on sale in bottles today.
Is this the same kiosk from which you stopped buying a weekly magazine some time ago? Karma?
Could well be that the considerable margin your news vendor makes on his cups of warm brown liquid helps keep him in situ as your newsvendor of choice.
If his brown liquid squirts out in 30 seconds chances are it is just instant coffee.
You could always plonk the right money on the counter pick up your grauniad or windy and be on your way with a cheery greeting, no point waiting for the taste-bud challenged caffeine junkies to receive their morning fix.

dg writes: I still buy my weekly magazine at a kiosk, just not the same one, and not this one either.

I would love to be able to plonk my coins on the counter while coffee is being dispensed, but there's so little room that (unless the coffee purchaser steps out of the way) I have to wait.

Buying slightly inferior station coffee used to be a nice little treat for me when I had got to the station a couple of minutes early and thus earned a warming beverage to drink on the train. Not much tasted as good as concrete evidence of one of the rare occasions in my life when I wasn't late.

And to think there was probably someone in the queue behind me grizzling because he had to wait an extra thirty seconds for his paper...
It's time and lack of preparedness (aka make the coffee before you shower, and drink it whilst getting dressed after it has cooled a bit). You don't want to waste time at home in the morning when you could still be in bed, or in work early so you can leave early.

But I very rarely buy coffee at the station (once a year?) because it's money down the drain. I can wait until I'm in work. Also the drink is annoying to carry if I want to get angry reading the Metro.
These people who aren't like me and don't like the same things I like really are inferior and should be open to all sorts of ridicule. Oh, the fools who enjoy the taste combination of something bitter and something warm and comforting in the morning, how erroneous is their worldview! I'm going to drone on about how much better than them I am. I'm a DG commenter, you've been a lovely audience, good evening.
@Trainsofthoughtlondon that's what I do. Instant Coffee is its own type of drink, distinct from what I call Real Coffee. I can therefore drink both quite happily. But instant coffee is always with milk, and sometimes sugar (the other half is trying to make me healthy), whereas the real coffee is often black. In coffee shops it depends on my mood, but I rarely want to stay long in one of these, pubs are far more attractive.
I used to buy my whole bean coffee at the world's first Starbucks, in Seattle. So I too often wonder how it is so many people wind up paying $4 a cup for coffee from some coffee place instead of just making their own at home.

I'm sure it's entirely a social thing. But I could never abide the wait, wait, wait in line that most folks don't seem to mind. So I don't get it.

I was shocked to see Starbucks take over the entire globe.
There is a nice coffee shop up fairfield road just before the construction... it is a bit far from the station though and they do cater for take away
I only ever bought coffee at the station in the morning when I had been to the doctors for a blood test first on the way to the station (which meant a water-only diet for the previous twelve hours, so no morning tea - or indeed breakfast). But the nice independant coffee shop on the platform has been ousted by a a branch of a megachain, installed where the station entrance used to be. Indeed, the location is so obviously where the entrance should be that it looks like the station is called Costa.
The new entrance is further away from the direction most regulars come in from (and indeed from the ticket barriers), so we now have to make a detour round the Costa to get into the station at all.
Also, as the train information available at the entrance is patchy, you have no idea whether a train is imminent until you get to the platform, and so can't tell whether you have time to buy a coffee anyway, or risk missing your train.
I think Camp coffee brand is a coffee and chicory mixture and is still on sale in bottles today.

Oh, yes. And whenever it is in stock at a supermarket that stocks it we buy at least half a dozen bottles if they have that many. Often hard to find because it is in the bakery section. This is not as stupid as it sounds as a lot of people use it as flavouring for cakes etc.

Best of the lot.
Instant Coffee is OK.
@geofftech - where's the Colombian place in Walthamstow?
If some of the coffee addicts cant afford a proper coffee machine or time to drip, maybe they should consider making cold brewed coffee.

Its considered less acidic than traditional methods and keeps in the fridge for a week, just add hot water or milk for ya fix.
One of the 'joys' of commuting on the tube for some people is holding a disposable cup of coffee on a jam packed train or tube. Each to their own I guess...
One cup coffee filters for me at home. Lovely consistent coffee, available in all supermarkets and plenty of varieties & strengths available. Much, much better than instant, much cheaper than coffee shops. Anyone who has tried coffee at my place also converts to these.
Camp Coffee was originally a coffee drink that could be easily prepared by the British army on field campaigns in India. It was made by a Scottish firm. The logo showed a splendidly arrayed Scottish officer, seated, being served Camp Coffee by an Indian soldier/servant, also splendidly dressed but standing with a tray in his hand. In later times, a more PC picture showed the two of them seated side by side, both enjoying Camp Coffee.
Can't resist following on from that, G A A - some years ago there was a cartoon in 'Private Eye' with the Indian soldier having moved on further, from the chair to the Scottish officer's lap. This was around the time civil partnerships were enacted.
Love it!
I can't believe that a post about coffee has generated so many comments.
I'm old enough to have used a coffee grinder and a coffee strainer, but these days I used something extremely cheap and simple: an Italian coffee-maker. You put water in the bottom half of it, ground coffee in the top, put it on the the fire (actually, and induction hob in my case), and in about three minutes you have freshly made real coffee.
I mean "I use", not "I used".
Just remembered that The Daily Mash has recently had an article relevant to this thread...

http://www.thedailymash.co.uk/news/society/britain-demands-non-oral-coffee-2013020859024
V. amusing and spot on piece about the fad for coffee and this utterly bemusing need to be seen carrying it about. I'm a tea person myself - every cup of coffee I've ever had tastes like scalding dishwater...










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