This is how I explain my refusal to learn anything about the varieties and nuances of "good coffee". If I learned to appreciate good coffee, would I still be able to enjoy common dinner coffee? I fear not.

I'm fairly sure I have a well-above-average ability to appreciate actually-good coffee and actually-good pizza—but am also genuinely happy with the bad stuff, even though I'm entirely aware it's bad (within reason—I've had a couple gas station cups of coffee that weren't just bad, but wrong, and I wasn't able to finish them, and instant coffee usually gets a polite "no thanks" from me, but if Folger's or Kirkland Ground or whatever is what you've got, I'll be truly grateful to have it)

I'm not that way with wine and beer. I don't like bad wine or beer at all. I will turn it down or just drink it to be polite, not enjoying it a bit.

I think the difference is I never liked bad wine or beer, while I started out liking bad pizza and bad coffee before I learned what the good stuff tasted like. So, you might be safe.

[EDIT] Reflecting more on this, part of it may be that I regard bad coffee and bad pizza as pretty much totally different things from good varieties of the same—I just happen to like both. I don't really consider one a substitute for the other, I guess. Bad coffee is just coffee-flavored... but I like coffee flavor! Good coffee has all kinds of flavors going on. If you're interested in getting into that, I recommend finding a highly-regarded local roaster doing a tasting event—I personally find it much easier to get into a new flavor-related thing, such that I can start to understand it and pick out various notes, if I can do side-by-side tastings of various examples of the thing, all in a short span.

It's similar with beer and wine, I just happen not to like "beer-flavored" or "wine-flavored", the way I do like coffee-flavored coffee or find greasy bread smeared with salty cheese and tomato sauce satisfying even if it's pretty awful—get me the nice stuff that has more going on and I'm in heaven, though.

One of my favorite coffee experiences was on an Amtrak. The cup of coffee was $2. It was served on a Pepsi branded paper tray thing. Carrying it up the narrow staircase was fun. I enjoyed every sip. It tasted like cream and sugar and the coffee my grandma used to make out of a metal tin.

It's a one-way street. You can love cheap poorly brewed coffee but once you have tried better the cheap stuff becomes undrinkable. Like going from a touch tone back to a rotary dial phone. Impossible.

Until my early mid 20s I never like coffee at all. Then I tried double cream and sugar coffee, then milky cappuccinos, then massive syrupy sweet Starbucks.

After years of "acclimatizing" I thought I'd branch out. I bought a grinder, fresh coffee beans, a scale, French Press, 16:1 ratio. I went black and never went back.

Coffee made well from fresh beans freshly ground has a sweetness a caramel like after-taste. Very little bitterness (comes from brewing too long) and can surprise even those who pile on milk and sugar or even salt to mask its bitterness.

All that fancy coffee prep still doesn't give you what a good diner coffee delivers though: a warm hug after a long night, or hanging with friends, or a big family breakfast, or talking with a potential soul mate after a first date... or countless other things I associate with drinking coffee in a diner

I don’t know. I make my own espresso drink every morning with locally roasted beans, but about twice a month I got to a cheap diner for breakfast and slurp down 3 cups of their black coffee with a smile on my face.

You can enjoy anything if you try hard enough. I go to great lengths to get the best coffee and prepare it in the best way possible, but I'm still very happy to drink an imperfect cup of coffee. Some of the worst coffee I can imagine is whatever they serve on American Airlines flights. It has such a weird flavor, I'm not even sure it's actually coffee. With all of that in mind, I am looking forward to drinking the next cup of airline coffee that is offered to me ;) It's something different, even if it's different in all the wrong ways.

The trick is to learn to enjoy all coffees for what they are. I'll take gas station murk in a pinch, and I'll drink it black when no options are available. But I also love coffees that are $10-15 per pound. But I usually buy in the $7 range. It's about being content, not being snobby, no matter how much you spend.

Edit: Agreeing with another commenter in this thread that some coffees at gas stations are truly awful and are immediately thrown away. Those aren't legit coffee though, and don't count toward what I said above.

This might be wise advice. I have spent a lot on gear, and I buy bags that are typically around $30/lb, although there are some great blends that can be picked up for around $15/lb.

It has ruined the cheap (Robusta) coffee for me. There are diners that make a great medium roast cup and use Arabica beans.

But the good coffee sure is good, and it’s fun to get familiar with the varieties.

I think you'd be ok, because good diner coffee is about a lot of things, but typically not the actual coffee.

Can you enjoy a Quarter pounder with cheese, and appreciate some nice prime rib?