I reccommend Organic Nicaraguan, especially recently. It is getting really good.
Panama is OK. It is basically from mountain hills, so it is fine quality and robust taste.
There is a Britt Coffee store, which is the Costa Rican tourist brand, in Xindian and Su Ping Street (inside the market). They have organic, medium roast, high/low altitude, all the range. You can also get the chocolate covered coffee beans, nuts, etc, there too, as well as coffee toffees, which are really nice.
[quote=“fromfaraway”]It will always be difficult to find good coffee, at home or outside. I am a fan of Italian coffee, and personally I think Illy Cafe, is about the best you can get. But given the best coffee and good equipment, these are only necessary conditions for a good taste, they are not sufficient conditions. The professional handling the machine needs to know what he is doing. So finding good coffee can be a bit of a hassle.
In Italy they even advice you not to have a coffee grinder at home because the granularity to use depends on the air humidity which varies and need to be considered when you grind your coffee.
However, in Taipei, I have managed to find a very small coffee bar around trhe corner where they serve very good cappuccino - when it comes to espresso I think the Italians are the only ones who dare to make it as strong as it should be and do not add too much water - but also the espresso is not bad.
The cafe is called Mei Mei Cafe, and I think they have two outlets but they are run in a small business manner and the coffee is good and cheap. Perfect to just drop in for the espresso or cappuccino.
tw.lifestyle.yahoo.com/biz_comme … 2aaf0f5617
Check it out.[/quote]
Ah… a first-poster recommendation… exciting!! Mei Mei Cafe, you say… OK. I have had my good share of coffee all over Taipei. I agree with you, a good cup of coffee is hard to find. I’ll go & check this place one of these days.
We’re moving to Chi-lung. My wife loves good, fresh-brewed coffee. We’re expecting to bring a grinder and cone. Can we get the appropriate filters anyplace? Who sells fresh-roasted beans? Starbucks? Do you have Peets Coffee Houses in Taipei?
I’m too darn lazy to grind… so, I buy instant. (Oh, did I say that out loud? Heathen, is my name). Anycase, we do Nescafe Gold, and I find it doesn’t give me heartburn the way the snobbish coffees do. At my age anything that doesn’t bugger up my constitution is a blessing.
Incidentally, the best coffee I’ve ever tasted was in Ketchikan, Alaska, on the harbour at a little lean-to coffee shop.
I may actually have to go there again! The fact that my mother-in-law was speechless while drinking her cup has absolutely no relevance…
I used to agree with you, and then all these people kept whining, “Breakfast is important!” so I added some milk and VOILA! Coffee AND breakfast in a single cup.
Unfortunately, it was a hard habit to break, and these days I drink all my coffee with milk (and a little sugar).
And, like others here, I’ve also devolved from french-pressed deluxe coffees to Nescafe Gold (only the Gold, mind you; the Classic tastes like pthaawwaathaaa 
). But Gold tastes good to me and I enjoy it.
if you like instant, try the “maxim” you can get at wellcome. pretty good!
Thanks, I still have 27 bottles of Nescafe Gold to go through before I get desperate. (I buy on sales, in quantity… Costco was built for people like me.)
There’s a very good roaster near the NE corner of Zhongxiao & Jilong roads in Taibei, who sells green, roasted, whole or ground, with a variety of beans or his own special blend. I have my own roaster, and tried roasting his green beans for a while, but he’s got better equipment and more skill, so his roasts are better than mine. So I now usually buy his whole bean, roasted blend. You can get a better deal from him if you buy a membership, or if you get a group of colleagues together to buy in bulk, in which case they deliver. Recommended.
I know Costco sells filters and you can find cheap coffee makers just about anywhere. There are a lot of specialist coffee places here, I’ve seen some outfits with some fancy japanese concoctions that takes up to 3 days to drop the water through the beans for a single cup of coffee… :loco:
Anyhow, I don’t drink the stuff, don’t like it, I guess my granny put me off it, she used to boil the shit out of hers in the mornings and it used to stink up her place when I was there as a kid in the summers…
I grind every morning, and it takes me about 30 seconds to go from whole beans to ground coffee. You must be very lazy. 
I grind every morning, and it takes me about 30 seconds to go from whole beans to ground coffee. You must be very lazy. [/quote]
I never had an issue with the grinding; there’s nothing better than the smell of freshly ground beans. I hated cleaning the stupid French press; it was just a huge pain in the ass…
Reviving this to get the ball rolling on this most glorious topic.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2ovhbT-Iulc
trend now is bulletproof coffee, which is selling for 1400 or more…
Taiwan is SOOOOO slow to catch onto some trends.
We’ve already moved onto Cannonball coffee overseas.
1400…For a months supply ?
They probably throw in a load of margarine made from palm oil and call it butter and then your arteries seize up :).
Noo. For like a small box of powedered who knows what. Actually they sell it for several thousand NTD on the TV shopping channels.
I got the gee for like 200 at the organic store, then MCT same or even less. Why would anyone pay for powdered instead of fresh is beyond me.
Bulletproof coffee is some good stuff.
"City Cafe at 7-Eleven stores last year sold about 300 million cups of coffee and sales continue to grow thanks to a focus on getting each cup right, President Chain Store public relations manager Lillian Lin (林立莉) said.
“We insist on high standards in eight areas” — the water, machines, roasting process and coffee beans used, the people making it, the coffee’s message and visual aesthetic, and the pleasure derived from drinking coffee — that ensure that consumers will enjoy a good, high-quality cup of coffee every time in a fashionable atmosphere, Lin said."
Seriously? They sell a lot of coffee but this statement is OTT somewhat.
Ok we really need to have a thread listing these acronyms. On The Other Paw?
Why?
Hey no gaslighting! You first wrote OTOP!
OTT I understand tho.
I’m bad at multi-tasking!