You forgot good water. If the water isn't good, it doesn't matter how good the beans are.

We only use Poland Spring bottled water for our coffee. Never faucet water.

I guess the water depends on where you live. Ice Mountain is bottled just a few miles from my house and my water from the faucet comes from the same aquifer. Yes, indeed, a foreign company is pumping our water out of our ground, pouring it into non-biodegradable plastic bottles and selling it back to us. Their website says: " Ice Mountainî Brand 100% Natural Spring Water comes only from carefully selected mountain springs that are continually replenished. What starts out as rain and snow, soaks into the ground and is filtered naturally by the earth with a distinct composition of minerals to create our crisp, refreshing taste." Yeah, it doesn't test any cleaner than the water does in my swimming pool, incidentally, the Health Department actually tried that for me.

My house has a "whole house" filter for the water and I use the water from my tap. My cousin works for Ice Mountain and it isn't filtered any better than my water from the faucet.

So, if your water is horrible, or smells bad, or is chemically treated, then I think it would make a big difference. If your water from the faucet is good, then use it.

As for the tasting notes, I can tell you what I like and don't like, but everything in the middle tastes much the same to me. The Costa Rican coffees are generally sweeter and seem "thicker", they have a nice mouth feel. Any coffee I've tried from Mexico tastes like dirt. Many, however, taste much the same to me.

I buy green beans, roast my own, grind fresh daily, use my Chemex, but many of the "middle ground" coffees are good, but not distinctive. I still like them a lot, LOL.

Annie

We don't drink faucet water, it's from our well, and even the pets don't like it.

Oh, it's safe, non-toxic, filtered, tested and retested, but no one likes it.

So I buy multi-gallon bottles of water and keep the water crock full, and have done so for many, many years. And I recycle those bottles. And then I buy fleece made from those recycled bottles.

We live next to the reservoir for Baltimore, and it's supposed to be good water. We can't get it because we are living in a protected rural watershed and water/sewer lines can't be run back into our area.

We get that water in to the city clinic building where I work, yet the city has bottled water delivered.

Re good water: I am surprised by the large variation in ground water. We would not have purchased our house if the well water had been poor tasting. However, I was surprised to find that our next door neighbor had poor tasting well water 'though the well was only 700 feet away.

Do my eyes deceive me or is that Keurig actually plugged in?

Does it make good coffee?

I've read a lot of bad reviews of the Keurig system

We use really good coffees - Kona for my son-in-law and Brazilian Santos for me. We enjoy good coffee.

Instant. Yum.

Folgers. Black. I'm good! Thank you!

Momj47, I've only had it at my dentist's office, he has one with various kinds of coffee for his patients while they wait. I had one by Green Mountain and it was OK but not outstanding.

Elery's sister also has a Keurig, but she quit using it when she found out what a cup was costing her. Now she sends her DH out to McDonald's every morning for her cup of decaf, and she doesn't make coffee at all. I know some other posters here have said that one will last about a year and give up the ghost right after the warranty expires.

angelaid, my Dad used to drink Folgers all the time, but he made a whole pot of coffee with two scoops of ground coffee and a pot of water. It was just brown, with no coffee flavor at all, LOL, and it put me off Folgers forever, I think!

I do have a jar of instant espresso powder that I use in my brownies sometimes, but I don't drink it.

Annie

My SO lives near one of the springs that is used for Deer Park water. I cannot believe the difference in the way my skin and hair feel after I have the pleasure of showering at his house. Same for coffee. It's kinda hard for me to get good tasting coffee with the dreck of hard water that I have, but I make the best of it.

There was an article today in the NYTimes on four specialty coffee roasters in Maine - nothing long or involved, but a fun read and something to keep in mind if you're sightseeing in the area, and need a little pick-me-up!

Here is a link that might be useful: Maine, One Coffee Roaster at a Time

Maine also has an ice cream maker who does not sell outside of Maine. Perhaps the ice cream should be eaten with the coffee?