[Mixtape]

> The best these people may have tried, and failed to ever reach and enjoy the true quality, having - indeed - some complexity behind it, is in visiting Starbucks.

This is a tangent from OPs point, but I would push back on this idea slightly. To be clear, there is absolutely a large number of people in the US who use coffee as a tool more than an experience and treat it as such. A frightening majority will shell out a few bucks on the daily for coffee from gas stations or chain restaurants, all of which will serve you the sort of over sweetened, watered-down coffee experience you'd expect in the US.

However, I'm of the belief that there are undercurrents of a strong coffee culture in the states as long as you're willing to look for it. I recently took a trip along the east coast and, while searching for souvenirs, found a bag of locally roasted beans that I decided to take home. They weren't necessarily my favorite roast that I've tried, but the fact of the matter was that I was able to taste a local cultural staple and identify what made it unique for relatively low effort. Likewise, there are a growing number of locally owned and run coffee shops popping up across the country using machines similar to those you described above (my local favorite uses a Slayer [1]). The Starbucks-ification of coffee and inflation have unfortunately normalized $5 16oz house blends at many of these places, but the experience is still far more authentic and feels like a deliberate choice rather than a passive act.

I apologize in advance for taking a "not all Americans" stance on this, but coffee is something that I'm genuinely passionate about despite living somewhere that tries not to be. I want other people who care to share these experiences too, but many just assume that every stateside coffee shop is the same. Hopefully this will help illuminate some other options.

[1] https://slayerespresso.com/