coffee maker

Making coffee is one of the easiest things in the world
and yet people are forever finding more and more complicated ways to do it. We live in an advanced coffee culture
where coffee is the most popular drink on the planet
and people get used to things like cappuccinos and lattes and start wondering how to do them at home. A trap some people fall into is buying the instant versions of coffee shop drinks
which inevitably taste inferior
instead of just making the drinks themselves at home.

The most important thing to realise about coffee-making is that
no matter what you might think
there is no variety of coffee-shop coffee that is really very difficult to make
despite the fancy names. An americano is just a normal coffee: coffee
hot water and milk on the side. A cappuccino is coffee
milk
and frothed milk
usually with chocolate sprinkles on top. A latte is milky coffee in a glass
and a mocha is the same thing with chocolate. A macchiato is coffee with frothed milk on top. Each fancy word basically means coffee
milk and froth in some combination (plus
occasionally
chocolate)
with everything else being pretty much a matter of presentation.

The coffee in each drink is made by an espresso machine
and a basic espresso machine is really all you need to start making coffee at home: once you can put beans in the top and get espresso out the bottom
there aren’t really any other features you need. This simple fact means that there’s not much difference between the cheapest and the most expensive coffee machines if you know what you’re doing. To make your coffee stronger
you just put in more espresso; to make the different drinks
you use different quantities of the different ingredients.