OK is good enough for my addiction...

Megan McArdle has advice on how to brew good cofeee. One commenter goes further and says in addition to grinding your own coffee, you should roast your own coffee right before you brew it.

I tend to agree more with one of her reader's comments:

The problem with increasing one's level of coffee snobbery too far, is the same as the problem with wines, home audio, or any other hobby that deals with diminishing returns: the increase in required investment (time, money, or frequently both) to go to the next level of enjoyment, begins to far exceed the marginal return from doing so.

In my case, I freeze my coffee to preserve flavor, and will continue to freeze my coffee to preserve flavor. I drink plenty, but even so the beans will start to taste stale before I can consume the bottom half of the bag; I'm not going to throw away half a pound of coffee to get some marginal, non-freezing increase in enjoyment from the first half.

Word. I like good coffee, but my coffee would make a coffee snob weep. I use a Cuisnart Grind and Brew programable ($30 as a refurb from Amazon - I bought it last Christmas because they were offering $25 off $125 and I needed a filler for my christmas presents to use the coupon). I use Starbuck or Trader Joe's beans - and lots of them. I program the coffee pot the night before - if I'm lying in bed and hear the coffee pot grinding away, I know I'm running late and need to get the hell out of bed and hit the shower. I keep my beans in the fridge. I've left beans out and they've gotten stale/skunky - I'd rather deal with whatever reduced flavor people claim than have to toss $5 worth of beans because it got stale.

The Grind N Brew lets me grind right before brewing, but that's as far as my feshness goes. I'm too lazy to use filtered water, or wash out a gold filter. And there is no way in hell I'm getting out of bed early to roast my own beans.