As part of its brave new plan to stop hemorrhaging money, Starbucks went out and bought a company called Clover that makes coffee machines. These Clovers cost $11,000 each, and brew one cup of coffee at a time. We're not math whizzes or anything, but at that rate, those better be some good fucking cups of coffee. So the New York Times sent a coffee connoisseur to taste seven kinds of beans from the new machine, and he came to the stunning conclusion: not even a magical $11,000 gadget can make burned coffee beans taste good.

Of the seven varieties of coffee, the reviewer was dissatisfied with five. Among the criticisms: "a long, unpleasantly bitter aftertaste," ""I hate it. That's really spoiled fruit, like really bad wine," and "The drip coffee tasted burned and acidic."

If none of the coffees made a favorable impression, we concluded, it seemed that the problem lay less with the Clover, or the quality of the beans, than with the roast.

All the beans we tried had the oily surface you get in a dark roast, commonly called French and Italian roast. Starbucks and other companies are often criticized by coffee connoisseurs for using over-roasted beans.

Overall, the Clover coffee tasted the same as a French press, just quicker. Wow.

In conclusion, stop burning the beans, Starbucks CEO Howard Schultz. You could have just read the comments around here to learn that.