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We've always bought lower-end espresso makers, because our needs are simple - 1. make coffee; 2. produce foam. But while the first cheapo we bought lasted several years,the ones after that have broken at a faster and faster rate. The Mr. Coffee we bought last year stopped steaming properly a couple of months back, and stopped working entirely this morning (after we had our coffee, fortunately). So I think we're ready to buy a better-quality model.

However, we really don't need bells and whistles, and I worry that the more expensive models are more costly due to having more features, not necessarily due to better craftsmanship. So, any recommendations? We'd like to keep it around $100.

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As a mattra-fact, Pie Face, you are beginning to look almost human. - Barbara Bennett

I had a Krups for years - and the thing that did it in was that my cleaning lady broke the carafe, which proved an expensive item to replace, so I didn't. But it worked great. This model is virtually the same, and is well under $100 - and just like mine, it takes up very little counter space. Check it out. (Bloomingdale's is actually a good place to look for espresso machines, should you want to go a little bigger or spendier - they carry as many as Abt, believe it or not. The Bloomingdale's home store on N. Wabash might be worth a trip.)

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Food & Flowers: Andre Jordan's sweet doodle for a cold winter's day; diary of an unhappy restaurateur, circa 1881; winter project - try a terrarium

Unfortunately, quality=cost (though there certainly are low quality machines with a lot of bells and whistles that drive up the price).

The first reason that good espresso is expensive to make is that you need a very good burr grinder. You can't make really good espresso if you don't have an appropriately fine and even grind. To do this, you'll need a quality burr grinder and that will cost at least $100, but more likely several hundred. It is common for people who want to make good espresso to spend almost as much on the grinder as on the machine.

Then there's the actual espresso machine. High quality entry level ones will be several hundred dollar and they won't have any bells and whistles. Two popular ones are the Rancilo Silvia and the Gaggia Baby.

You might enjoy what you get from a $100 espresso machine and, if that's the case, I'm not telling you to go out and spend a thousand dollars on a good home grinder and machine. To see the difference in what you'd get from a $100 machine and a really good one, get an espresso from a cafe that takes espresso seriously, such as Intelligentsia. Again, I'm not saying that you *should* spend $1000. If you enjoy what you make at home, stay in the $100 range. I'm just saying that these machines produce a product that is quite different from true espresso.

Two good sites to check out are http://www.sweetmarias.com and coffeegeek.com. The latter also has tons of user reviews of every coffee product imaginable (including reviews of inexpensive machines). A good site to purchase stuff, besides sweetmaria's, is wholelattelove.com.

There are some existing threads you may want to check out (or have this thread merged with one of them):

viewtopic.php?f=32&t=28676&p=327000

viewtopic.php?f=32&t=1546&p=220044

I checked out some reviews of Krups machines on Amazon, and there were an equal proportion of good and negative, which makes me a bit leery. Of course, people do like to post complaints more than compliments, so that may well have something to do with it.



True, but we are definitely pleased enough with what we get from a cheaper model to stay on the lower end. I think the nuances of a really good machine would be lost on us

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As a mattra-fact, Pie Face, you are beginning to look almost human. - Barbara Bennett