Do you find yourself wondering why you have a Mr. Coffee?  Does the pot in the coffee machine still look full at the end of the day?  Is there any one else at home that ever drinks coffee?  If you answered yes to the first two questions and no to the last you should start looking into a personal coffee maker for the home and office.  There are hundreds of personal coffee makers on the market and I have even found one closed out in a dollar store from Melita.

Using a personal coffee maker saves time and there is a great deal less waste of coffee beans.  With the beans being the highest cost involved, if you use less per time brewed you can save more money and maybe use it for the Starbucks blend instead of the Eighth O’Clock coffee from the grocery store.  You will not have to wait for the pot to be done brewing or worry if what is left in the pot tastes OK or not.  Just take your personal coffee maker and make your cup right away.  Hot coffee in seconds.

Personal coffee makers run from a simple filter shaped cup (where you put the paper filter before adding grounds) with a sieved bottom that fits over the top of your coffee cup with small openings for the coffee to come through to a true personal coffee maker that actually brews the coffee into your mug and has its own power source.  Some even have a travel mug as part of the package.

Most of the major small appliance makers have a one cup or one mug coffee maker in their arsenal.  Black and Decker, Toastess, West Bend and others have models starting at less than twenty ($16.99) dollars while not going over thirty dollars.  All of these models require the use of a #1 paper filter for each cup.  There is an item from Keurig that runs $79.99 and uses patented “K” cups for the coffee so that you do not need any paper filters.  In fact the model comes with a permanent metal mesh filter and eliminates the need for grinding.  This model comes with a ten pack of assorted “K” cup coffees and has one touch operation for easy coffee making.  Additional “K” cup coffees run around twenty three dollars or a little over a dollar each for a twenty two count box.

Italian coffee maker is a generic term for a great variety of machines that make the various kinds of coffee attributed to the Italians.  Espresso, cappuccino, café normal, latte all have different methods to make their own unique flavors and textures.  Coffee has been raised to an art form in Italy and it shows in the myriads of flavors, coffee types and how they are consumed.

Caffe coretta is drunk like a shot, for breakfast you can have a sweet cappuccino or brioche, and iced coffee to cool off in the afternoon and an espresso to wake you up with a double shot if you are tired.  A good way to get into an argument is to ask a bunch of native Italians what is the best way to make stove top espresso.

An espresso machine is an Italian coffee maker that can be fully automatic, driven by pumps or levers and can be totally manual like the Moka Express.  The Moka Express is a wonderfully designed Italian coffee maker that you use on your stove top.  You put water in the bottom chamber, fill the coffee chamber with finely ground beans and press down tightly.  Assemble the pot and put it on the stove on medium heat; when the water begins to boil you will hear a gurgling noise.  That is the steam mixing with the water moving upwards through the packed coffee.  Remove from the heat and serve it how you like it.

Expresso and Espresso are not the same thing to Italians.  Ordering one when you want the other in Italy will get you widely varied results.  Expresso is a very fast train in Italy while Espresso is the coffee drink you are looking for. Italian roast coffees are also very different than their French roast cousins.  Italian Roast coffees will have little or no oil in them and are a rich dark brown.  Roast times are longer than Arabica as well to get the best flavor when grinding.  Also when staying true to the style of Italian coffee makers you should use a grind wheel for your coffee as it produces a finer grind than a blade grinder.

To find a decent espresso maker you will need to invest at least $150 as any models less than that are usually difficult to use and produce less desirable results.  The way to make sure your Italian coffee maker makes good coffee is to have a really good grinder to get the grind as fine as possible.