Espresso Machine

If you were on the go and wanted a cup of coffee fifteen years ago, you’d either stop into a roadside diner for a cup of joe or toss down fifty cents for a Styrofoam cup of sludge from a gas station convenience store. Things have changed a lot, and the reign of Starbucks and the local coffee shop have gotten into full swing. On just about every corner you can find a coffee shop, chain or otherwise, selling lattes and mochas and all sorts of coffee-flavored drinks. Most of these coffee shops serve great coffee and have nice atmospheres, but it all comes at a price. If you go to Starbucks for a medium latte every day before work it will cost you around $1,200 per year. That’s a lot of cans of Hills Bros. “But wait,” you argue, “I like espresso drinks a lot more than I like freeze-dried coffee. And coffee shops are the only places I can go to find it.”

As it turns out, you can make everything Starbucks puts together with an at-home espresso machine. For a long time espresso machines were luxury items; huge contraptions costing thousands of dollars. They were finicky and tough to maintain, so they weren’t very popular. Once the specialty coffee shop came onto the radar, however, demand for home espresso machines skyrocketed. Consumers loved the coffee they were getting at coffee shops but wanted to make their own at home. The market responded, and now you can find a wide range of different espresso machines ranging from less than a hundred dollars to a few thousand.

The options and features of these machines vary, but all of them force very hot through fine coffee grounds, only giving the water contact with the grounds for a short time before condensing the water and steam into a strong, caffeinated brew. Almost all of them are also fitted with steam nozzles to froth milk for mochas and lattes. Most of these machines operate on loose grounds, but a few use pre-packaged ground packets. They’re a little easier to work with than the loose grounds, but they’re more expensive since you have to buy the individual packets and the espresso isn’t quite up to par with freshly ground espresso beans.

With a quality espresso machine you can make the same drinks you get at the best coffee shops for a fraction of the cost. Not only that, but each espresso drink you have will be made exactly the way you want it.