heck yeah, I agree about buying the $5 20oz "cups" of coffee but I don't buy those. I just grab a plain old coffee...a large coffee at anywhere from Starbucks to Seattle's best to McDonald's is ~$2...one just needs to past the whole "coffee shops are evil incarnate and expansive" idea...refills at SB $0.50, I don't believe you can get refills at MickeyD's though.
BTW, Starbucks coffee is in general mediocre but OK. Same for most of the chain store shops...they have to over roast their beans in order to get consistent taste from batch to batch. Once ya try some well roasted beans, wow, what a difference. I never would have believed it until I tried some home roasted vs. the same beans from SB's...I was in the coffee is coffee camp but it's apparently all in the grade of the beans but probably as much, it's in the roasting as well. mmmmmm....which I had an old original hot air popcorn popper that folks like to use to roast beans at home...but I just opened a bag of a new to me Starbucks Summer Blend that is super for the iced/cold coffee drink I keep around most of the year, I like iced coffee more than hot, unless nature needs some "help" in the AM...snickersnicker...
I actually brew up the coffee in a quasi-Turkish flavor/style but use a nice coffee maker that still puts out 200-degree hot water after almost 2-years. Just a plain Jane home model maker by Bunn bought at our local Walmart w/o any bells & whistles, still the best coffee maker I ever owned. Oh, here is the new coffee I have been enjoying because of the subtle citrus accents:
http://www.starbucks.com/coffee/whol...a/gazebo-blend
it's not the gazebo blend but rather the bag is labeled Summer Blend....
OK, sorry for the mini-jack, but these days coffee is about the most interesting thing in my day.
I even experiment with tea/coffee blends with mixed degrees of failure.