Posted by TheShot on 25 Jan 2008 | Tagged as: Home Brew, Machine
Today’s Seattle Times reported on how the exchange rate wreaked havoc on the American waiting list for the La Marzocco GS/3 — their first machine designed with home use in mind: Retail Report | Espresso-machine price leaves some steaming | Seattle Times Newspaper.
For two years, La Marzocco promised a hefty $4,500 price tag for the [...]
Posted by TheShot on 16 Dec 2007 | Tagged as: Consumer Trends, Home Brew, Machine
Today’s New York Times published a brief article on Francis Ford Coppola’s personal obsession with espresso machines, of which he’s apparently owned some 300 to date: The Epic in a Demitasse Cup - New York Times. Of particular note is a machine that is “an early favorite, a large, silvery old-fashioned machine for the first [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 04 Nov 2007 | Tagged as: Consumer Trends, Foreign Brew, Home Brew, Machine
Today’s New York Times Magazine published an article on the declining design aesthetic of the espresso machine: The Pod People - New York Times. As the author puts it, “Cape Canaveralesque control centers that have replaced those great machines.” And she blames the meteoric popularity of Starbucks, which inspired a great wave of ensuing greed [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 31 Oct 2007 | Tagged as: Machine
Although its approach is more from the caterer’s perspective, the Web site for the UK magazine Caterer and Hotelkeeper published an article comparing the merits and tradeoffs off traditional versus automatic espresso machines: Coffee machines: traditional versus automatic.
The article cites analysis where traditional machines used up 22% more coffee than their automatic counterparts. However, the [...]
Posted by TheShot on 04 Jul 2007 | Tagged as: Add Milk, Home Brew, Quality Issues, Starbucks
This week, The Guardian (UK) posted an article on the elusive quality cappuccino: How’s your crapuccino? from Guardian Unlimited: Word of Mouth. While the Brits may disparage the “dirty dishwater” that is American coffee, even in London you’re helpless to find a cappuccino that isn’t served in a gargantuan bowl, filled mostly with milk, and [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 02 May 2007 | Tagged as: Consumer Trends, Home Brew
Last week, JL Hufford Coffee and Tea of Indiana announced a patent for a super-automated home espresso machine that would use artificial intelligence (i.e., pattern-learning technology) to anticipate the espresso beverage needs of its owner: Presenting the Coffee Machine That Reads Minds. Artificial intelligence technologies have long suffered a reputation for being “a solution in [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 11 Apr 2007 | Tagged as: Consumer Trends, Quality Issues
In case you thought we were simply making things up for the benefit of a joke, coffee is truly getting worse at the same time it’s supposedly getting better. Today’s commercial flood of poorly designed home espresso machines marks some of these steps backwards. Other examples are more insidious, such as how the Nespresso machine [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 09 Apr 2007 | Tagged as: Beans, Café Society, Consumer Trends, Home Brew
Contrast with the many home espresso machine design failures, Nestlé’s Nespresso pods and machines have been something of a consumer success story. The Nespresso machines do exhibit good design and an impressive amount of convenience. For a number of home espresso lovers, however, these advantages ultimately pale in comparison to their required use of stale, [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 09 Apr 2007 | Tagged as: Home Brew, Machine
In yesterday’s International Herald Tribune, design critic Alice Rawsthorn wrote about the increasing number of design failures in commercial products today: Why the overwhelming numbers of design flops? - International Herald Tribune. What does she consider to be a design failure? Something that’s “not especially efficient or environmentally responsible” … “nor are they lovely to [...]
[view full post]Posted by TheShot on 02 Apr 2007 | Tagged as: Home Brew, Quality Issues
Last month I mentioned an article on David Lebovitz’s site regarding his recent training at Illy’s Università del caffè in Trieste, Italy. David is a professionally trained pastry chef and writer, and recently he’s taken up a bit of an obsession with quality home espresso production. (Sound familiar?)
Today his site features an article and “Top [...]