karamba wrote:I know some people who do single dosing in order to not mix coffee with stale beans from yesterday. Another way to achieve the same result is to purge the coffee that is left in the grinder before making the first cup in the morning. Let's not consider the case where people do this for the purpose of changing coffee often.
Also assume you make two shots in the morning - for you and the significant other, some do more ( I for example ) some just for themselves.
Assume that it takes 1 minute in the morning to go the freezer of wherever your coffee is stored, measure two portions 18 grams each and put the rest back and place the jar back where it was before.
In two month you will spend one hour doing extra work on single dosing.
The place I buy coffee charges me about 2 cents per gram ( I buy a lot and store it in the freezer for a month)
So if you purge you waste let's say 4 grams every morning or 8 cents. In the same two month it will be 8 cents per 60 ~ $5.
So essentially doing single dosing you are making $5 per hour.
Depending on where you live it might or might not make much economical sense to mess with single dosing every morning.
Now if you are not a capitalist and just enjoy doing this that is a different story.

at a cafe the time is more valuable at home the coffee is more valuable. a barista at a cafe spending 30 more seconds in prep time for every coffee means for every 120 drinks they make they have spent an extra hour. 30 seconds for someone at home (or 1 min for two) is not a big deal and if it is then maybe you should find a new hobby.

Economic efficiency is not a idea that is specific to capitalism.

??? Am I inferring this correctly? "If you single dose you're a Capitalist"??? (Assuming this carries the negative connotations to it that are so often applied to capitalism in today's society...)

Not sure if I buy into that. As Jeff points out, I simply do it because I I pay more than $0.02 per gram for the coffees I want to try and want to have as much opportunity as possible to enjoy them. I wouldn't ascribe a life philosophy to anyone for a single choice they make in a chosen hobby; I just say "Do what works best for you!"

This is HB, not Facebook or Twitter; and here words are words, not bullfighter capes. The OP "capitalist's view" on single dosing versus on-demand is an aka for economic rationality.

The OP's analysis was good as far as it went (many people are undervaluing their time if they single dose), and the rejoinders completed the analysis by adding 1) that some people enjoy the process of making shots, so that the time spent is not an expense, and 2) that some coffees are expensive and rare, so that the time spent not wasting them is justified.

Economist point of view: A bigger picture
If every coffee drinker in the world cared or not, this 3g saving or loss translates to 3,000,000,000 grams per day of savings or loss every day. Economic and environmental repercussions of this small behavior adjustment is staggering. Add 10 more things a person does during the day and it gets even more interesting.

Warning: editorial and off topic
Real world does not work within artificial labels. Capitalism aka glorified name for individual centric economic activity and socialism aka state centric economic activities are not enemies or mutually exclusive. Unchecked capitalism can destroy the society and the rich with it. Aggressive socialism is best way to keep poor in poverty for perpetuity. The key is balanced coexistence. The strength of human brain is that it can quickly detect patterns in a vast amount of information. The weakness of human brain it that it would rather detect and believe in wrong pattern than see or believe in diffuse reality. This is cost for sacrificing accuracy over speed, that could get us out of life threatening situations. That's why you see absurdity of people getting flamed by labels and taking extreme positions, even if it means hurting themselves in a bigger picture or longer timescales.

appfrent wrote:Economist point of view: A bigger picture
If every coffee drinker in the world cared or not, this 3g saving or loss translates to 3,000,000,000 grams per day of savings or loss every day. Economic and environmental repercussions of this small behavior adjustment is staggering. Add 10 more things a person does during the day and it gets even more interesting.

We buy more coffee -> it is more in demand-> coffee growers and distributors notice and increase production. The economical effect - thousands more people employed. Coffee is better and there is more of it. The environmental effect: Increased coffee plantations -> more oxygen in the air - less global warming.

Now everyone's lost minute in the morning correspond to the same huge numbers of lost time. These losses are final an unrecoverable and no one benefits from it.

If I want to be cost efficient I'll just make a French press of pre-ground coffee. But this game of ours isn't about the cheapest way to make our morning coffee, although we are probably saving money over cafe drinks.

My preferred way of grinder is to use the grinder's timer with the beans in the hopper. The results are better, and the workflow is easier, but I need to take the beans out of the hopper and put them back in the container when I'm done for the morning.

In a cafe, you can use the hopper. Single dose grinding has no benefit.

karamba wrote:That's $300 for kg of coffee! I take my hat off!

I have to laugh and all the more reason I home roast to very affordably fix my daily habit.

Good idea, Matt. I'll do so.