Had a buddy who managed a "euro-style" café back in early '80's when gourmet coffee was just starting to be a "thing"; they had fresh-roasted varietals for sale and served pastries and crepes.
Anyway, discovered the joys of Ethiopia Mocha Harrar and Guatemala Antigua and real Colombian and Sumatran.
Did the cone filter thing on weekends, but finally drifted away from it in early '90's, it was an economy thing.
Experimented with the name brands and settled on Yuban (it was 100% Colombian back then) for quite a while and snickered at the Starbucks addicts when that craze hit, "been there, done that".
But Yuban ain't what it used to be, as explained below, and I just go for whatever's on sale between Folger's and Maxwell House and even Safeway's (surprisingly good) house brand.
Splurge on 100% Colombian once in a while but never dark roast anymore.
Generic "Breakfast Blend" is usually the nice light "clean" flavor I prefer these days.
Some surprisingly mis-understood facts about coffee:
Caffeine is actually destroyed by the heat of roasting as Ralph said.
Your light and medium roast are gonna give you the best jolt if you like that.
Caffeine stimulates your pancreas to release insulin.
Sugar in coffee is a good thing to moderate the jitters.
As coffee sits overnight (or even just on the hot plate) the acids break down the oils that give the flavors. (I used to reheat my leftovers at work, too, but not anymore)
Also for my tastes I discovered I preferred the nuttier chocolatey tastes that were better preserved by a medium roast.
Ethiopia (where coffee was discovered and first cultivated) and Sumatra of all places, were the kings, there.
Finally, the good Arabica strains are under pressure from Coffee Berry Disease and Coffee Leaf Rust and it's pressuring the small high-quality varietal producers out of production; the industry as a whole is moving towards robustas and hybrids that are disease resistant and which they claim taste
almost as good as real arabicas.
But I got refined taste buds and I'm here to tell ya it just ain't so, joe.
So if you're wondering why your everyday brand name coffee don't seem taste as good as it used to, it
don't.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12571-015-0446-9
Now you know why....