The first week or two after I got my espresso machine I was having 3-4 doubles every morning, and I definitely got anxious and jittery.
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HFBB?
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We have a $500 “super-automatic” espresso machine.
We are not coffee nerds, nor rich ppl. But since we both work at home, and both drink a few cups everyday, and are both lazy af, it has been a good investment.
The machine:
-Grinds the beans.
-Makes coffee, iced-coffee, espresso, lattes, steamed milk, boiling water.
-Cleans itself mostly. (you need to clean out the milk-container if you make lattes)
-Makes a cup at a time.
We mostly just use it for coffee, but even that is great just because it’s freshly ground.
I’ve been looking at some vacation properties lately, and one had a $3700 coffee machine.
Honestly, if you’re looking at like $million houses, why not?
But yeah, my money philosophy is to optimize the things I use the most. So for example, I own a $5,000 car and a $700 cat litter robot.
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While I agree with your philosophy of spending on things you’ll use, the why not for me and that coffee machine is that it was monstrous. Took up a huge chunk of kitchen counter for something I don’t need. I typically drink 1 double strength cup daily, and the wife doesn’t drink coffee.
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It is the way.
Oh, yeah, that’s fair. My machine is obnoxiously boxy, but it uses less area than the drip + grinder + container we had before.
What kind of machine are we talking? Brand name?
Bosch. The big one.
I’d forgotten that thing existed. For that much cash, and that much space, a La Marzocco is the answer I think.
I am happy with the Barista Pro that I snagged on FB. I could see spending $1500 on something to replace it if it broke since it is something I use 5-6x daily. The one thing I like is the instant on heater in it, no wait up time.
It did act up on me once. Something was messing up the water flow sensor, so I youtubed the solution which seems to be to pull off the cover and fiddle with some hoses to get an air bubble out. Gotta think that was overkill, but it worked when I put it back together, and I got it all back together other than a few plastic clips that broke off that mainly keep the housing aligned.
That and the Gaggia Classic are the two machines that everyone loves. If you want to upgrade, I’d suggest maybe getting a better grinder, that’s really where the action is. I say that, I don’t recall what grinder you have.
I’ve heard from many espresso heads that you should spend more on the grinder than the espresso machine, or at least in the same ballpark.
It has a built in grinder. They switched to baratza in 2023, but it looks like mine is from before the switch (5 instead of 6 spokes on the burr).
It has 30 settings on the outer adjustment, and 5 inner settings. There seems to be enough play still within the 30 settings that being on the +/- side of it is enough to change the time it takes to pull a shot by 3-4 seconds. I’m not paying close enough attention to this to think it will really matter to me, and I am turning it into an americano anyway. It’s still a much better cup of coffee than I’ll get making a pot of drip coffee or a watery keurig.
It seems like I should be able to use the grinds as a fertilizer or something? I have my knock box that sometimes I’ll empty into the back yard, but they are too wet to save for more than a few days as it will turn into mold after that.
That should suffice, 150 settings is a good level of that. My Baratza grinder is similar, I can tweak it one level to slightly change the time required to pull a shot. I was thinking you had the Bambino, which doesn’t have a grinder built in. And yeah, if you’re not drinking straight espresso getting it absolutely dialed in is less critical. I’m usually doing lattes or americanos, milk drinks are REALLY forgiving.
My wife does this but I don’t know the rules. Like maybe good for some plants but not others, or how much is too much, she is the gardener in the house!
It’s definitely not 150 distinct settings across a single range. The 5 ranges from the inner setting overlap, and the outer burr setting is a continuous knob adjustment with a meter that has 30 digital tics. It’s good enough for me, but I can see how it would frustrate the perfectionist.
Ah, interesting. Still, you said that you have fine enough adjusment to change extraction time by 3-4s, good enough for most. Hell, for a decade plus I made espresso with a blade grinder and a $99 Krups machine. I thought I was being fancy when I upgraded to a Cuisinart burr mill that had EIGHTEEN settings.
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I empty my coffee maker by hurling the pucks over the deck and into the garden. It’s fun. I don’t know or care much about how the flowers feel about it though.
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Depends how acidic they like the soil.
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I am suddenly very coffee rich. The 5# each of regular and decaf was running out that I ordered at the end of June. I still have a bit of the regular left, but am down to a couple days of decaf. So I ordered another 5# of regular, and 3 1kg bags of decaf, thinking this would be a good ratio, and should last me for about two months.
Ordered Tueday, box arrived today, seemed a bit heavy, and was packed with 6 1kg bags of decaf. I guess they read the order as 3 5# bags of decaf (ignoring the half pound diff).
All the bags, except one, were roasted on Wednesday. That one was roasted about 3 weeks ago.
Any benefit to putting the extras in a freezer over just shoving them in a closet in the basement?