Espresso News and Reviews – TheShot.coffeeratings.com

Last week, the Guardian (UK) published an article on a home espresso enthusiast’s journey to obsession: In pursuit of the ‘God shot’ | Food and drink | Life and Health. Having reviewed almost 600 espresso shots in SF proper ourselves — most of them pretty bad — we’d like to believe we know a thing [...]

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 [...]

Today we came across a New York Times-syndicated article that alluded to the shortcomings of most home espresso machines: Life: Get off to a healthy start in the morning | juice, cup, milk, divide, servings – OCRegister.com. What attracted us to it was some “unconventional” wisdom about home espresso machines — something we rarely find [...]

In the “unclear on the concept” department, this weekend’s Toronto Star published an article that, in its opening paragraph, mentioned “coffee’s elevated status as the new wine.” However, it then proceeded to discuss coffee-pod-based home espresso machines in the same context: TheStar.com | living | Specialty coffees become the new wine. This is as incongruous [...]

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 [...]

Today Bloomberg published an article about the latest generation of restaurant and home espresso machines, designed with the idiot in mind: Idiot-Proof Espresso Machines End Excuses, Target U.S. Market – Bloomberg.com: Spend. Andrea Illy of Illycaffè has to be very careful not to speak out of both sides of his mouth. On the one hand, [...]

Today’s Wall Street Journal features an article on a new home espresso machine/system being introduced by Illycaffè next month: Re-Engineering Espresso – WSJ.com. Illy’s new coffee-pod-based machine/system is called Hyper Espresso — ‘hyper’ being a sort of European equivalent of ‘super’ (as in hypermarket shopping). The system consists of a custom machine (produced by Illy [...]

Today Earthtimes.org published an article on the evolving consumer coffee market in Vienna, Austria: Vienna’s coffee makers take on the convenience cup : Health. While Vienna is steeped in a long tradition of contemplative coffee-drinking in elegant cafés, modern trends such as espresso drinks, big international coffee chains, “to go” coffee, and home espresso machines [...]

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 [...]

I’ve written both here and elsewhere on how the state of home espresso has both improved and become worse at the same time. While home espresso is mostly out of the Krups Dark Ages, its future is uncertain: super-expensive, super-disappointing super-automatics are now de rigeur for high-end home kitchen designs as a new format, coffee [...]