Espresso at home

Working from home has some great advantages. No longer am I stuck in rush hour traffic, less stress, more time for me. If I sleep in? Work starts in my PJs. However, this means no Starbucks or Caribou between home and the office. For me it's about 10 minutes to the closest Starbucks and a little less to the Cafe Mayorga. So that Krups espresso machine I had that I hadn't used in a while 'cause steaming (and buying) milk is a pain for me, comes out and is back on the counter. I was drinking drip for a while, but my machine works best with 1/2 a pot or so, and I just don't drink that much any more.

So now I'm on a double espresso with 3 sugar cubes bent. I had been buying Starbucks ESE Pods for my machine, as that's what I had always bought in the way of pre-measured packets of coffee. They require no griding, no measuring, no tamping, and therefore are little trouble.

Enter Dad. He also has a Krups machine that takes ESE pods, but he uses Illy pods and ridicules my Starbucks pods. And lately it's been hard to find those pods. So I figured I look around and see if I could score some of these Illy pods. No dice. Then I remembered that I worked on the Interweb, and did a search or two, and found some great pod sources:

• Pod Merchant
• amazon.com
• ebay (you can search them yourself, I'm no fan)

I also found out that Illy is responsible for this invention, though it seems like everyone is doing a similar thing these days.

Anyway, the ridicule and the lack of Starbucks pods, and clear abundance online made me order some up, I settled on a 50 Lavazza Gran Crema Espresso Pods pack off of Amazon fulfilled by "Espressotiamo" mostly because of the free shipping and my knowing the Lavazza brand. Placed the order on the 5th, and it just arrived today (which isn't bad at all).

Made a cup and it's not bad. I think Starbucks roasts theirs a bit longer and packs it a bit tighter, but this is just the beginning, next up I will have to try ordering the Pod Merchant Super Sampler and a tin of Illy's, perhaps 2 (one medium roast and one dark roast).

So do I miss that cup from Starbucks? Not at all. Even the worst of these pods are going to be better than 90% or more of the espresso that I've had from Starbucks. Any espresso drinker will tell you that they just don't have the machines or the talent to pull a proper shot. I stick to the frou-frou drinks at Starbucks that are over laden with milk and flavor syrups, 'cause their espresso just isn't good enough. Of course that means for my current double shot I am paying around $1-$1.25, at Starbucks, after loading it up with crap I didn't really want just to make the coffee palatable, I'd pay around $3.75-$4. And that is an expense I certainly won't miss.