Like many people, I enjoy a delicious latte or whatever fancy flavour-of-the-month is on offer at the local coffee shops. While I’ve always loved the drinks (and the cake!), being an introvert with a degree of social anxiety doesn’t always make the experience enjoyable.
Almost exactly 3 years ago, fed up of price increases and shrinkflation, I decided I’d try making my own espresso at home. I invested in the best-rated budget setup I could afford – a Sage Bambino and matching Smart Grinder Pro – and excitedly purchased my first bag of beans. Here’s my original setup:
Of course, it was awful. It turns out that making espresso is actually quite hard. Down the YouTube rabbit hole I went, learning how to use the right dose and “dial-in” correctly. It took me several weeks, but I did end up with a pretty successful workflow that resulted in decent coffee maybe 80% of the time.
The stumbling block was my choice of beans. Lavazza blends were my favourite, readily available from most supermarkets and to be fair, not bad for a mass-produced product that’s been sat on the shelf for 6 months. But to get really good espresso, you’ve got to buy freshly roasted beans, and you don’t find those in a supermarket. They don’t tend to come cheap either (saying that, the Lavazza decaf beans have gone from £7.50 for 500g to £12 in little over a year!).
I was not yet ready to purchase from individual roasters, but discovered that some of them sell on Amazon and their beans are still pretty fresh. I was also able to get a few on Subscribe & Save, which sometimes worked out cheaper than buying direct. This gave me an opportunity to try lots of different roasters without buying from lots of different websites.
Around 18 months ago, I decided to upgrade to a better machine which was on a very generous offer at the time. So now I have the Sage Barista Touch (plus a filter machine which I snagged for £20!) and this is my current setup:
I’ve developed specific tastes now. I avoid light roasts as they didn’t play nicely with my grinder. I love medium-dark roasts, especially ones with a smoky/nutty/caramel flavour profile. What’s been most exciting is seeing the range of decafs available. I’m a big decaf drinker, but have always been sorely disappointed with the rubbish options that instant offers.
Talking of instant, I cannot drink it now. The stuff is vile!
While I do love to experiment, I’ve got some favourite coffee companies and I purchase direct rather than through Amazon. Here’s a few I recommend very highly:
We Are Coffee (the San Lorenzo decaf is lush!)
The CoffeeWorks (the Chocolate Brownie blend is fantastic and superbly priced)
Blue Coffee Box (offers a different “surprise” coffee every month)
So the key intention of doing all this was to save money, and did I? Well I’ve spent around £1200 on equipment, and if the cost of a typical coffee-shop latte is £4.50 then I’d need to make 266 coffees to break even. At an average of 2 coffees a day for the last 3 years, I’ve made *drum roll* 2190 coffees!
The cost of the beans, which work out typically from £20-£30 per Kg for a decent roast, makes each cuppa an average of 33p (I make single espressos, but even if they were double it would still only be 66p a cup).
So I guess that’s paid for itself rather well then. OK, I would never go to Costa or Starbucks twice a day, but I can make any type of coffee, as often as I want and it now only costs me 33p a time. Bargain!