Reply With QuoteA refurbished Delonghi corso - £150 ?
Options required here please.
I use a Melitta BTC at home and love it. Easy to use and I like the product. We have acquired a weekend place and I need to make coffee there too but obviously occupation will be more limited and not just us.
I could have another BTC but it would need a good clean at the end of every occupation and whilst I can do that I can't be sure others will. A dirty machine left untouched for a few weeks would be grim.
I could just stick to a cafetiere but I'd rather make each cup fresh and may make half a dozen for both of us through a morning so it wold need remaking a couple of times.
Pods - no idea if they are any good, never tried them. I know I pay about 9p a cup at home via BTC and pods are noticeably more.
Aeropress - seems a decent option but I don't know how much cleaning is required between cups which would be nuisance if making lots.
I don't want much, decent coffee, not too much phaff or mess, BTC does make you lazy!
Anything I have missed?
A refurbished Delonghi corso - £150 ?
A moka (stove top) pot is a low cost option -
https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?k=Bialetti
I think I assumed these are single cup jobs but clearly not the case. Thanks I'll have a look.Originally Posted by inthered
ETA - 6 cups but 6 espresso cups so a bit bigger would be preferable. I'll have a look.
Last edited by DavidL; 10th July 2023 at 16:19.
Pods are OK but just not the same as fresh beans.
Do what I do - take your BTC machine with you when you travel. Or have a spare machine and lock it away.
You travel with a 2ft by 1ft coffee machine?
Mine's a little larger than that. But yes, I absolutely do.
That's dedication, I salute you sir. I was hoping to do it slightly "lighter".
I’ve got my Sage Barista at home, but every 4 weekends I need to visit the mother-in-law in York for the full weekend due to her health… been doing it since last year and I couldn’t take the Nescafé gold blend any more, so I picked up a pre-owned Delonghi Dedica which I just leave down at hers now. Really easy to clean the portafilter and wand.
It’s small so doesn’t take up too much counter space, makes ok coffee although the steam wand won’t give you microfoam. It’s fine for espresso/americano/cappuccino/macchiato… basically most stuff as long as you don’t want to get arty. Also picked up a cheap grinder as part of the deal, but to be honest a quick trip to 200degrees and they’ll grind me one of their freshly roasted bags anyway.
I shall look at those. Thanks
Yep. This. We use a Bialetti one every morning.
Yes , me to Bialetti
If it must be a Bialetti wouldn't get an aluminium one.
It will be on an electric hob, does that make any difference?
Aero press is a great bit of kit. Worth a try
Bialetti espresso pots with flat bottoms and an alloy base work well on electric hobs.
The Stainless Steel mocka pots (as recommended by big nose Dave on this very forum) work much better on gas hobs.
The Stainless versions work, but are a little slow on a Halogen hob due to the profiled base.
I use a 3-cup for half a mug (or small cup)
6-cup pot for a full mug.
And a 9-cup pot for 2x mugs.
Some of the pots came from TKMaxx for less than £10 each.
We have 3 in the house. And 2 in the motorhome.
Lavazzo rosso ground coffee is available from Costco.
Last edited by Reeny; 11th July 2023 at 09:44.
If the budget stretches to one (and often on offer) consider an Alessi https://www.amazon.co.uk/Alessi-Espr.../dp/B000HWY2QE.
Available in 3, 6and 10 cup versions. Personally, find far easier to use than the screw type.
Wilfa grinder plus either an (as suggested above) Aeropress if it’s fine to make one cup at a time, or a Chemex for mass production.
That's very nice if a little spendy. Ah well I have lots of options, thanks all.
Not clear from OP who will be using the property. If it’s being let out at all I’d just go with a pod machine.
They're OK, but in reality they aren't much of an improvement over a cafetierre / french press.
To brew an espresso you need around 9 bar of pressure. An Aeropress probably only manages a tenth of that.
Take a look at the offerings from Wacaco. These machines do have a hand operated high pressure pump. I bought a Pico-presso & I can honestly say it makes a decent double espresso. It is easily as good as my Sage home machine.
That said, it's a faff. It's designed to be portable, not quick or easy to use. Making one cup is OK, making several at the same time would be imparctical. Double espresso is all it does. It doesn't come with a pressurised basket either, which means travelling with a grinder and beans rather than leaving them at home and buying pre-ground at your destination. Or doing what I did and purchasing an aftermarket pressurised basket.
30 second rinse under the tap after a brew, job done. I used one at work when I went into the office every day, I maybe washed it properly once every couple of weeks and just rinsed after each use the rest of the time.
DS
There is currently a Prime Day deal on the 10 cup version at £108.99.
I absolutely love my Alessi pot and use it every single day, but my wife regularly struggles with the handle locking mechanism for some unfathomable reason.
If it broke tomorrow, I would buy the exact same one again. (Coffee pot that is....)
Mrs K's got the hang of it now after I caught her trying to unscrew it the first time. I've got the 6 and 10, usually use the latter.
Bugger so there is.... I may have just bought one...
We use the 10 cup stainless steel version on the induction hob. Enough for two mugs full too. Aldi Columbian,,☕
Great stuff.
Hope you get on with it and it does what you need it to.
i just make one cup fresh with a french press, just put less water in
The correct answer is Aeropress + Lavazza Rossa. (Or Illy Intenso for high days and holidays.)
Ends thread, Shirley?
I was going to suggest a Sage Precision Brewer as used by James Hoffman:
It's very good but I don't use mine enough so it's going on Gumtree.
I have an Aeropress and just ordered a Bialetti 6 cup from Amazon. Waiting for the coffee to be delivered!
after trying everything i went back to the mocha pot , it may be psychological [cue anecdote]
I was on a live aboard intensive sailing course in the BVI , up at 6am , breakfast then exams before exhausting practicals until about 3pm when we'd head back in for dinner and anaesthetic in the form of lots of "pain killers" or "dark and stormies"
Getting up in the morning the first thing I'd do was stick the massive old fashioned mocha pot on the stove ( one of the glass lidded ones from the 50s).
Whilst washing up off the back of the boat one evening one of the "crew" took the lid off the mocha pot and went to hurl the remaining coffee out not realising the basket and percolator would come flying out into the deep. ( also managed to lose my maglite they'd borrowed the same way)
Next week after graduating we were bare boat chartering and after being without coffee for so long I bought a big pack of Folger's columbian and every morning would look forward to filling the boat with the smell of the coffee and drinking a big mug on deck watching the sun coming up. Bliss.
Anecdote 2
Despite trying every coffee maker under the sun i keep coming back to the mocha pot , I despise nespresso for some reason , they taste "cottony".
In India I pretty much lived out of hotels for 10 years but always carried a cold brew pot and a bag of course ground coffee , cold brew in the fridge (hopefully if the room had one) overnight and I'd usually decant it into an empty "bisleri" bottle and swig it throughout the day as required .
Interesting to read as I keep coming back to looking at the Wacaco solution for when I’m in the office as really hate paying £3-4 for a coffee given how many I drink.
My concern is the almost boiling water taps they have provided in the kitchen areas won’t be hot enough.
Don't just do something, sit there. - TNH
Glad to see you didn't go for capsules.
Had a Nespresso for years but the day I got bean to cup the pods have never tasted the same.
Still have a Nespresso for decaffe as a dual hopper Jura is silly money.
I still keep looking at the bean to cup machines but they’re huge!
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I think bean to cup is best for espresso or black coffee. Once you want a latte or a flat white you need extra bits, that's half the reason I still have the Nespresso. The milk attachment on all Juras is nonsense and needs a special clean with a Jura tablet at the end of each day which for me is after one.
I've tugged the Nespresso over for this pic, I'm not allowed them side by side as it sets her off immediately. It's normally hidden behind a KitchenAid.
Think the Jura was £380 or £400 on a Costco special. Nespresso was about £650. Still trying to find a preferred bean!
Thank you for the side by side photo, I have the same Nespresso so really helps with the size of it all as a comparison - even my wife looking across at the photo just now said 'its a bit big', and that was before I even asked for an opinion lol. I rarely have milk with a coffee, so god knows why I went for that machine, apart from it looks good vs the others.
I have in the last year or two started to enjoy different teas, so coffee consumption much lower - the £1 Nespresso machine with £x a month for capsules, has resulted currently in me having 'somewhat' of a large credit with them for capsules / any purchases. They never expire, so not a concern but an interesting view on consumption changes when I was getting through a sleeve a day.
Why do you have it on a raised platform out of interest?
Last edited by Mj2k; 15th July 2023 at 17:32.
I have no idea. The people we bought the house from had the platform there with a fruit bowl on top so I put the coffee machine there. The platform is a bit of leftover quartz or granite so nowhere else to put it.
I need to try and get into some teas for the afternoon. Bought decaffe tea but didn't like it. Maybe time for some Twinings Ribena style bags.
Very tempted to quit coffee but it's no fun sitting on the lounger for half an hour with a glass of water.
Teas??? Try Twinnings sleep… I drink 3 cups a day and it’s lovely
Lots of nice Pukka options too
Thanks. Will pick some up.
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