Real Coffee Machine? ☕

[nelsonic]

Context

Opening this issue because
@davcsj recently asked why we don't have a coffee machine that uses roasted (or ground) beans
instead of the plastic (super energy intensive and wasteful) coffee pods ... ☕ 🤔

We have thought about this in the past, but not opened an issue ... 💭 🚫
because we know from experience that espresso machines make a lot of noise: dwyl/focus-hub#44 (comment) 🙉

Also recently, we visited a friend's house who has a Breville (Sage) machine and swears by it.
"Much better than Nespresso..." 😋
They proceeded to describe a "craft roaster" based in the center of Braga that roasts "the best beans" ... 🫘
This reignited my interest. 🔍
Not in drinking more coffee as I'm actually trying to avoid it, more on that later,
but in a more eco & cost-effective machine!

Breville Barista Max: https://www.amazon.es/-/pt/dp/B07VKT3YNK

This is definitely a price anomaly because the exact same model is sold by Amazon ES for a lot more, just search for it:

My sister has the higher end version of this machine that has a screen etc and they love it! ❤️
But I don't think the one with a screen and more bells & whistles is right for a shared living house. 💭

Pros:

• Coffee beans/ground is much cheaper than pods 💰

  200g of premium roast coffee is €3.50 at our local supermarket.
  10 capsules with 5g of coffee in them is €1.99 the price is not even close.

• (More of) the PROFITS from consuming coffee beans go to the growers not the plastics/packaging middlemen. 👩‍🌾

  If we discover that we are consuming beans in large enough quantities, we could

• the spent coffee and can be 100% composted no plastic to landfill

  Note: we often buy Aluminium capsules to avoid the plastic,
  but they are more expensive and still go to landfill.
  💡 I've been tempted to build an extract & crusher to remove the 5g of spent ground coffee
  from the coffee pods and crush the remaining capsule down to minimize their size.
  But that still won't change the fact that the capsules use considerably more

• All supermarkets still sell beans / ground coffee because customers demand it.

Cons:

1. Cost! We already have a Nespresso machine and it works well. ✅
2. Recently bought 100 capsules in bulk and have used fewer than half. 💸
3. Barista style machines take up more space on the counter! 📏
4. Cleaning a bigger machine with more moving parts will require more effort/time. 🧽 ⏳
5. More effort to make a cup of coffee than capsules ...

Our local Eco store has the following Organic coffee beans options:
https://frascoafrasco.pt/en/463-coffee

[iteles]

The noise levels are a total deal breaker for me in a co-working space. It's so obnoxious.

This is somewhat aided by moving the coffee station to the opposite side of the kitchen and ensuring the kitchen and dining room doors stay closed.

The other big con for me is cleanliness. The likelihood of people staying with us cleaning out the machine properly and/or with any care is low, even with a cleaner checking it over once a day 🤷🏻‍♀️

But the low running costs (provided the poor cleanliness doesn't cause maintenance/repair issues) are a huge plus. 👌🏻

[nelsonic]

At the time of writing, this machine costs a lot more from other sellers:
https://www.worten.pt/produtos/maquina-de-cafe-manual-breville-vcf-126x-15-bar-cafe-moido-7072524

[nelsonic]

We are rapidly coming to the end of our Nespresso Capsules! 🎉 (don’t worry, we don’t buy them from Nestle!! Lidl sells them much cheaper and they are indistinguishable in a blind taste test!)
But that means we can finally setup our real coffee machine in the new year! 🆕
Will require some reconfiguring on out kitchen counter,
And a whole system #113 for ensuring people use it appropriately, but I’m excited as our coffee game will be next level and we can (jokingly) look down on the people who still use capsules. 😜
Insert meme of hipster barista here. 😉