Risky to buy? It's not real estate it's a cup of coffee. And if you're worried about people faking it, just buy a $2 mason jar and make some in the fridge while you sleep.

I don't get the fascination with paying exorbitant prices and constantly complaining when it's next to zero effort to make it at home, cold or hot. And the best part is you get to choose where your beans come from, you don't have to worry about the political slant du jour of the coffee shop, and you can do it all for a fraction of the price even when using the most expensive beans.

> you don't have to worry about the political slant du jour of the coffee shop

I can't say this has ever been an issue for me. Generally, they just want to sell me some coffee.

Yes, risky to buy. In the same way a slot machine has an expected value of 80-99% payout it’s still a bad use of money even if you only put in $5.

If you object to the word “risky” I used it in the sense of “uncertain you will get the value you expected”. Perhaps there’s a better word.

> In the same way a slot machine has an expected value of 80-99% payout it’s still a bad use of money even if you only put in $5.

Why is this a bad use of money? When I go to a restaurant and give them $20 for dinner, it’s not like I’m getting $20 worth of ingredients.

It sounds like you just don’t like gambling?

> It’s a market for lemons at this point. Unless you can see an expensive apparatus or observe them soaking the coffee, there’s no way to know if it’s correct

Presumably the taste should tell you whether it's correct. Otherwise why care if they fake it?

If they "fake it" and it tastes better... then why are you going out of your way chasing some marketing term that tastes worse to you?

I prefer to know what I'm buying before paying for it.

Unless I'm a visiting tourist I'm likely to go back to a good coffee shop many times. Being surprised my cold brew isn't cold brew - both the caffeine content and taste are tells IMO - for one visit isn't life or death here. I just don't get it again.

Caffeine content in the cup is not a good metric. It is one of the most easily extracted compounds and is roughly equivalent across brew types. The beans themselves are a bigger variable in this regard. Even if you are using a roaster's signature blend, the bean composition of that is going to change month to month and year to year. Even beans from the same physical trees will have varying caffeine content depending on agronomic factors.

In the same cafe on the same day, the reason different drinks have noticeably different caffeine content comes down to the different doses and concentrations they end up using. E.g. 20g coffee would normally produce either a 40mL espresso or 12oz drip. So putting that 40mL espresso in a 5oz cappuccino is much more concentrated than a 8oz filter.