I love LOVE my Senseo. Spits out a cup of coffee in a minute and the 2nd cup in even less time....you can get a wide variety of coffes to go into it and it's neat and clean because all the coffee is sealed in little pods...no grounds to deal with.
Yes....expensive....but worth every penny to me!
Linda C

Here is a link that might be useful: senseo

I'm not that worried about price - I think I would pay up to $200 for a good espresso/cappuccino machine that would hold enough water to make four regular espressos/cappuccinos. I would not want to have to buy only one brand of coffee, however, as I would want to experiment more than that. For me to buy coffee now, I have to go back to my old neighborhood, but I still shop there for a lot of things anyway. Coffee is not as popular in Westchester as it is in Venice or Santa Monica or even Culver City!

Thanks for the recommendation!

Lars

I like the French Press, I like the vacuum coffee brewer even better.

Have you had coffee make from a vacuum brewer? If not you can go to youtube and take a look at the many videos.

dcarch

Lars, I make cold brew coffee with a Toddy Coffee maker. It makes a lower acid coffee that is very smooth, and won't upset your stomach or bring on the acid burn. (It's the only kind I can drink anymore, but I can drink it.) It's very good coffee, the nice thing being when you make the liquid concentrate, you make it a pound at a time so you only have to deal with the grounds once, until you make it again. I drink it every day, and the concentrate will last about 3 weeks in the fridge. This might be an option for you. All you have to do to make a cup is heat the water, and add the liquid concentrate. (1/3 concentrate to 2/3 hot water.) I wish I could make you a cup to try...I think you might really like it.

Oh dear, I've got a little of everything. I'm not a really picky coffee drinker, because I'll drink yesterday's coffee warmed up in the microwave, but I'm really picky because I don't care for Folgers/Maxwell House/Chase & Sanborn. I buy freshly roasted Paramount Breakfast Blend, roasted here in Michigan, or Biggby coffee, also roasted in Michigan. I don't like Starbucks, it tastes "burned" to me, Renee of Big Valley Coffee used to call it "Charbucks", LOL.

So, what do I use as a coffee maker? Here at home I have a very nice Cuisinart that Elery bought me, it has a water filter because when the second well kicks on in the summer our water here in town isn't all that great. It grinds the coffee to my specifications and it has a timer, so I can set the timer for 6:30 am, add water and beans and go to bed. In the morning I'll hear the coffee grinder start, the water filters and my coffee is waiting for me when I drag myself out of bed.

I also have a Chemex, you just grind the beans, put them into the filter and pour boiling water over the grounds, it brews the best cup of coffee I've ever had and the container is pretty, with a wooden bank and it can be placed on the table.

I have a french press that I use when I want a single cup, sometimes, also good coffee.

At work I have a Hamilton Beach brewstation. Amanda has one for the camper too, her camper has electricity and she likes the fact that there is no pot to break, just push in on the lever and you get your coffee dispensed.

Elery's sister has a Senseo. She likes the machine and the coffee but says that she spends $60 a month for the little pods and so she's gone back to the KitchenAid coffee maker and we sent her some Paramount coffee.

Annie

We like strong, cone-drip coffee. Italian or French roast, extra-fine grind, from Peet's, Stumptown, Thanksgiving, or Flying Goat. Blue Bottle decaf French is excellent.

We use the Melitta porcelain cone and coffeepot, but the Chemex brand filters. They are woven, not paper, and the hands-down best filters in the world for making great coffee. If you've been using paper filters you can immediately taste the difference the first time you use a Chemex filter.

Great coffee requires the best quality beans, no quackers (green, very acidic beans of inferior quality). Grind just before serving, heat the water just under boiling (around 195 degrees) and pour through the grounds. Fast, easy cleanup, and makes superb coffee.

I sometimes make a pseudo-espresso by double-dripping coffee through a second measurement of fresh grounds. If you use Italian instead of French, this could keep you going all day on a 6-oz cup, LOL. I use this for making iced coffees or gourmet mochas with organic heavy whipping cream....yum!

I have one of these and love it. True, the coffee is expensive, but I agree with Lindac that the speed of these machines is great.

Here is a link that might be useful: link

I'll add a little oddity to the mix Lars. The bitterness of brewed ground coffee is occasionally a problem for people which can cause some stomach distress. To eliminate the bitterness make Whole Bean Coffee, not ground coffee.

How to:
Place 2 T. whole roasted coffee beans per 6-ounces of boiling water in a good-quality Thermos. Seal tightly. Lay Thermos on its side for one hour (for better distribution of water and coffee beans). The coffee is lighter in color, but it won't have any bitterness.

I think my neighbors make the best coffee I've ever tasted. They buy green coffee beans and roast and grind them themselves. I'm not much of a coffee drinker, but I really do enjoy a cup sitting with the neighbors on their front porch. I think they found the "secret" to great coffee. When I make coffee for myself I use a French Press.

-Grainlady

We use Bialetti stovetop espresso makers 80% of the time. So I guess we typically drink quasi-espresso rather than coffee. SWMBO also likes hers with frothed milk; I like making her pretty drinks with melted Nutella, creamy heads, etc. Myself, I drink it either dolled up or straight/black. This means a fair bit of preparation time for each cup, but we only have one or two a day.

When we want regular coffee, e.g. for guests, we use a French press or a Melita drip cone. One leaded, the other unleaded.

We don't have a coffee ''machine'', though I certainly wouldn't stop Santa from bringing one of those all-singing all-dancing coffee robots that grinds the beans, steams the milk, sifts the chocolate, and dispenses a cappuccino, latte, Americano, etc at the push of a button. Or a great gleaming, three station, barista type machine. I'd need to build an addition onto the kitchen.

Our coffee of choice is Catahoula (Richmond, CA), Peets (Berkeley, CA) or sometimes Stumptown (Portland, OR). I like those Lavazzo vacuum-packed bricks too. I agree that Starbucks is too charred.

>>We use Bialetti stovetop espresso makers 80% of the time>>

Ah, the Bialetti Moka! Inexpensive and wonderful. At one time every Italian restaurant in the Bay Area would bring one to the table when you ordered coffee.

Now you hardly ever see them, even in SF's North Beach. The French press has taken over, sadly. On a recent trip to the PacNW, a superb meal at Cascina Spinasse (Chef Jason Stratton is a GENIUS) was topped off by coffee brought to the table in a Bialetti Moka. It was like Old Home Week! I hadn't seen one in decades but immediately recognized it.

Trust me, Johnliu, you wouldn't want to clean one of those machines. How about you use it, spouse cleans it, lol.

Starbucks isn't charred, it's simply low quality coffee full of quackers. Extremely acidic and harsh. Without cream and sugar it's pretty much undrinkable.

Thanks for all the very helpful information, everyone! I learned a lot more from this than I did from trying to get it from Google searches! I was not really familiar with the Bialetti machine (although I had seen them, but not in use), and so the link I posted below was very surprising to me. I had no idea that it worked that way.

I'm intrigued by the Toddy coffee maker, but it would require me to plan perhaps too far in advance, and I'm not good at that. However, it is very affordable, and if it will make coffee that will upset my stomach less, I think I should give it a try.

I never drank coffee until I moved to San Francisco in early 1970s, and back then the Melitta drip was what everyone seemed to use. Coffee still upset my stomach back then, but I tolerated it better then than I do now!

Peet's coffee is available at Bristol Farms, and the store is in my general neighborhood, but I will go back to the Venice coffee & tea shop where I used to buy my tea. I'll probably go back to buying tea there again as well, as they have the best selection, and I love their "Fancy Keemun" tea.

Annie, it sounds like you have all bases covered, and I might eventually end up with multiple coffee makers!

Lars

Here is a link that might be useful: Bialetti cappuccino maker with video

So now I'm going to have to try cold brew, first I'm going to make it in a jar in the fridge like I saw a reviewer of the Toddy coffee maker say they liked better.

I think we first encountered the Bialetti in an old stone farmhouse, one stormy, chilly winter night somewhere in Tuscany. After puzzling out how to use it and how to open the small brick of Lavazza that we'd found at the back of the cabinet, we were delighted by the strong, dark coffee. We've used that device ever since, there are four rattling around here. The glass-topped ones are new to me, ours are all metal. Eataly had a large selection of the glass Bialettis, and I was pretty tempted on my visit.

Speaking of Lavazza, do I only like it because of sentimental associations? Is it, perish the thought, the Maxwell House of Italy? It is certainly ubiqituous enough.

This is just a tip for those who might want to try Toddy Coffee...Although the coffee is much smoother with the cold brew, it helps to make it and let it mellow for about three days before you drink it. I can always tell when we have a fresh pitcher, as the coffee tastes a bit more harsh. That makes it easier to go ahead and brew a new batch before you run completely out of the concentrate. Besides waiting overnight for the brew, the thing that actually takes the most time, is waiting for the coffee to drip completely through the filter. That takes about 30 minutes (it won't be hurried!)

Interesting, Bialetti has cappuccino makers too. You put (a precisely measured amount of) water in the lower chamber, coffee in the basket, and a (precisely measured amount of) milk in the upper chamber. Start the burner, the espresso flows into the upper chamber, mixing with the milk. Pressure builds, suddenly a valve on the stem opens, and in seconds the residual steam in the lower chamber blasts the milk-espresso mixture into a creamy, foamy beverage. The expanding cappucino would easily overflow onto the range, if not for the (precise measuring). It is terribly clever and works a treat. $22 at a second-hand store.

I had a stovetop cappuccino maker once and I wouldn't recommend it. Mind you, I spent a LOT more than $22 on it, so for that price it might be worth playing with. The problem with mine was that it took a really long time to build up enough steam pressure to froth your milk. Like, long enough for your coffee to cool down.

My next cappuccino machine was even more expensive, but the chap who sold it to me (he's still in business here 25+ yrs later) explained that you need a pump to make real expresso/cappuccino because you need superheated water to contact your grind, and that won't happen at atmospheric pressure. Anyway, DH uses this machine all the time, but I'm too low-tech to fiddle that much for a hot brown beverage. My fav coffee maker is an AeroPress, which makes a brew similar to a French Press, but is wayyyy easier to clean. Also, it has a pretty small capacity so it might not be too useful for Lars if he only makes coffee for dinner parties....

This thing is fast! The milk gets heated as the espresso is brewed, they mix together, and suddenly there is a burst of steam and it all creams up. I love it. They are $65 to $80 normally, I'd buy it at that price too.