Unhinged people who prefer tea over coffee probably wouldn’t appreciate a good espresso machine. You might conclude that someone isn’t trustworthy the moment they reveal themselves as tea lovers. Yuck.

A few days ago my coffee maker (crappy one at that) broke, and I ended up buying some energy drinks over coffee, which turned out to be the most horrible idea ever, as I was getting incredibly anxious/jittery versus just being awake and productive on what I would hope to be a boring day at work.

I don’t think I can emphasize enough how much of a bad idea drinking energy drinks is… but for whatever reason, there’s a culture out there that embraces energy drinks. They are proud of their Monster, White Claw, or whatever brand is popular these days. Heck, even one of my coworkers would just type in White Claw several times as if we were supposed to cheer or something.

I don’t know whether I should call energy drinks a subculture on its own. Sometimes you get hints that people really like their energy drinks the same way people appreciate beers, whiskey, etc. There are people who would vouch for their favorite energy drink fervently while criticizing other brands. All in all, I feel like this type of thing shouldn’t exist but… there’s a huge market out there.

Going back to espressos… I overheated my espresso machine by accident because I wasn’t sure how to properly operate it. Now, you might think these machines would be intuitive, but I guess if you don’t read the user manual you can end up breaking your machine internally.

Well, to be honest, a little heat shouldn’t really impact its production of a good espresso shot. That said, I can’t imagine the machine breaking fast.

The machine I acquired was from Amazon, a Gevi Commercial Espresso and Coffee Makers, Professional 20 Bar Espresso Maker.

I’m not going to claim I’m the best at making lattes. As I mentioned before, I usually drink black coffee, so my shots are just diluted into a strong Americano. It’s just enough to get me through the day.

It has been a learning experience for me… I feel like I’m insanely bad at properly frothing the milk, and while I don’t want to be a barista in the sense that I want to spend time making designs and all that, there’s something that bothers me with the coffee beans I’m using… because I can’t get a proper good flavor out of them when using it with milk.

That’s not to say that my Gevi espresso machine isn’t working. I have actually made a good couple of black coffee cups with it. It is just possible that the brand of coffee I use isn’t good to fully appreciate the taste.

So I ended up picking two brands of ground coffee to finally once and for all conclude that the brand I’m using is just bad quality.

I purchased: Lavazza Italian Roast Ground Coffee, and Tim Horton’s 100% Arabica Dark Roast

Now, I’m not sure about Tim Hortons yet because I’m pretty sure it’s not going to be a big deal. I do look forward to tasting these new ground coffees this week and reporting back whether I loved them or not.

All in all, there’s certainly a learning curve with espresso machines. They aren’t difficult to learn, but it is absolutely not the same as a French press, or using a drip machine. I think the hardest part for me is actually finding a middle ground for the taste I want to achieve after I get my shots.