Are you familiar with Schrödinger's cat? Take a second to take a look.

Now that you've done that, I propose a second, corollary experiment: Schrödinger's coffee. Given a cup of coffee, until you taste it, it's going to either be the best cup of coffee in the world, tolerable, or horrendous. Clearly the act of tasting it collapses the waveforms and determines what it's going to be, but can you actually measure the state before tasting it?

I propose that if you make the cup/pot of coffee, you can influence it to some degree. If you're buying it, clearly you're hoping for an optimal outcome (best coffee in the world or at least tolerable). And if you go to someone's house and have had coffee there before, you have an idea of whether or not to avoid it in the future.

But what about the unknowns? Your first time at a friends house? You're trying a new coffee shop? Is there anyway to attempt to determine which cup of coffee you're going to get? And let's not forget that randomness factors in: your favorite coffee place will, on occasion, throw you a wild card in the form of coffee not made to order or sub-standard coffee. What do you do then?

Is there any way to predict - and therefore avoid - bad coffee???