Why a good home coffee machine is an investment for life

Ever been charged $5 for a truly ordinary coffee?

Invest in a good home coffee machine ... like the Expobar Crem Leva.

There I was, pootling along the freeway on a new two-wheeled death trap, when I smelled coffee. Not literally, of course, because at 110km/h on a West Australian freeway all you really focus on is other road users who’ve forgotten that their vehicles are equipped with mirrors and indicators. This is a Western peculiarity I’m having difficulty with; another is the inexplicable tendency to stop at roundabouts even when no other vehicles are approaching from the right. Anyone stupid enough to ride a motorcycle in WA needs to be on top of the local customs.

Anyway, in my mind, I smelled coffee and before anyone else had attempted to change lanes in front of me, indicating only when the manoeuvre was complete, I pulled into a filling station with a view to refresh, refuel and refocus.

I know what you’re thinking: Why on earth would you buy coffee at a petrol station? And usually you’d be right. But the hardware suggested I’d come to the right place: sitting beside the bain-marie with its sad and overpriced sausage rolls was a gleaming Synesso coffee machine – a coveted object of industrial design excellence in coffee circles.

“Hand-built to order by a small team in Seattle,” says the distributor’s website. It probably comes with a trucker’s cap, tattoos and beard. Indeed, these high-end American machines are the bee’s knees, according to most serious baristas, and cooler than a genuine, vintage Steely Dan T-shirt. To buy one, we’re talking $20,000 plus. The Mazzer Italian commercial grinder next to it – again, industry-leading stuff – reinforced the message, as did the bag of beans on display, produce of a prominent national roaster with an excellent reputation.

Aldi’s Lazzio-brand beans are an unmitigated bargain.

So I ordered coffee. “Great set-up you’ve got here,” said I to the lass at the helm of this desirable rig, for while I’m no coffee geek, I do appreciate both the end-product and the hardware that goes into making it. How could you not?

She managed a murmur of acknowledgement – perhaps her mother had told her not to talk to motorcyclists – at which point the penny might have dropped. The die, however, was cast.

Because we have no issues with waste disposal in this country, my long macchiato was presented in a disposable cup with not even so much as a grunt this time. For this privilege, her colleague took five of my increasingly worthless Australian dollars. Five.

I get it when I take coffee at my favourite local cafe – which I do a lot outside of school holidays – with music and papers, wi-fi, service, blah blah blah, but $5 for a truly, truly ordinary coffee consumed at an outdoors, socially-distanced picnic table? There’s something deeply wrong with this country.

There’s nothing wrong with our appetite for coffee, though. Anecdotally, sales of domestic machines have boomed during Covid and I wouldn’t be at all surprised if a fair percentage of those sales were “forever” purchases: that is, made by people who’ve had cheap espresso machines from China in the past and decided to upgrade to something that’ll last, theoretically, forever. With the appropriate grinder to boot. Covetable pieces of chromed cast steel.

I went this route about 15 years ago and, yes, you need to be prepared to amortise the cost over a long period, but in the end you have the benefit of better coffee and a machine that gives you joy. Who needs a car built this decade?

A friend of mine – a modest, highly intelligent man who is not wealthy by any stretch – did exactly this recently, spending $4500, but the pride he has in the new set-up is palpable. It will last longer than him. Like a Rolex, but more useful. Hope his son likes coffee. He’s open-minded, my friend, so I hope he’ll take on board my suggestion that Aldi’s Lazzio-brand beans are an unmitigated bargain. After dropping that kind of money on his domestic coffee set-up, you’d image he’s looking for a few savings.

Maybe my new friend at the servo should give it a try?

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