Make Better Coffee than Starbucks

Our society runs on coffee, so it seems fairly ridiculous that most people are incapable of making or recognizing good pot of coffee. Starbucks is NOT good, it's terrible--I think there might be merit to the idea that they purposely sell terrible coffee to boost sales for their higher priced items....

After that, Clark discusses rumors that Starbucks deliberately sells bitter, burnt-tasting coffee so that customers will order its more expensive syrupy, milky concoctions (Venti Capitalists, P. J. O’ROURKE)

I love the cafe atmosphere, but I tend to try and avoid Starbucks at all costs. There's so many great little cafes that there's no excuse to ever set foot in Starbucks. My personal idea of heaven is curling up with a coffee and a book at your neighborhood bookstore or cafe. However, the fact that I live on a farm, in the country, in upstate NY generally makes it difficult to find a place that sells coffee besides the trucker-friendly gas stations.

Now I know you've been waiting with bated breath--how does Jen make perfect amazing coffee everytime?
a. She has lots of practice
b. Her mom taught her
c. It's really easy

All of the above. It's so simple.

1. 1 tablespoon of coffee (level it off perfectly) for every 2 cups of water in the pot---by 2 cups I mean the 2 on the pot, NOT a measuring cup. If you're the precise type, it's 1 tbsp for every 8 oz of water.

2. Put the coffee in the filter, the water in the coffee maker

3. Turn on the coffee maker. Presto, perfect coffee.

You should first become proficient at this. Then you can tweak it to match your coffee tastes; if you want it stronger or weaker, you can alter the amount of water, by a cup give or take. For crappy generic coffee, to make it smoother, I usually add 4 tbsp of coffee and about 9 cups of water. For expensive flavored coffees like Paul De Lima I like my coffee alot stronger. I'll either mix it half and half with something cheap and generic like Folgers (which doesn't always work, sometimes it tastes terrible), or if I want the full delicious effect I might add an extra tbsp of the flavored coffee or decrease the amount of water.