i’ve mostly given up on expecting/trying to make coffee taste good. at this point i just eat the roasted beans and carry on with my day. it’s also more efficient since you lose a fair amount of caffeine through the brewing process. at this point i only have like 8-15 beans a day.
i still go to a cafe from time to time if i want a nice cappuccino or something, but i don’t bother with any of it at home.
edit: i should mention that roasted coffee beans can taste pretty good if they're been roasted properly (and even better if eaten within a week of roasting). and you can get a pretty decent bean roaster for like 200$, and then after that a 3 lb. bag of unroasted beans costs like 30$. the 200$ upfront charge is pretty expensive, but it ends up paying for itself pretty quickly since you save an insane amount of money from buying unroasted coffee beans. when eating the roasted beans, a 3 lb. bag can last about 6 months to a year. so thats about 30$ to 60$ a year spent on coffee. even when i was brewing coffee, i found that the roaster paid for itself in about 6 months. not to mention that it's not that hard to learn how to roast coffee beans, and everything tastes much better when using freshly roasted beans.