A well-liked professor in college introduced me to a wonderful coffee maker while teaching us about a particular quality control method. The method relies on finding characteristics of a product that are important to a consumer, figuring out a scale on which to measure the characteristics and, finally, improving as many of the characteristics as possible, starting with those most important to the consumer. He set out various qualities of coffee: bitterness (or acidity), aroma, temperature, smoothness (a measurement of the particles left), and some methods for measuring each of those characteristics. His daughter was taking classes at the university where Alan Adler teaches, and was introduced to this amazing coffee that she could drink without her normal milk and sugar.
The coffee was an ordinary blend of coffee, but from a very different type of coffee maker. At this point in the class I was attentive because he was slightly off-topic, but I wasn't real excited, as there are many coffee makers out there that I'm sure make a great cup of coffee after all, they can cost several hundred dollars. My ears perked up when he mentioned that it costs only 30 dollars, and can make from 1 to 4 cups of regular coffee or espresso.
On my birthday list for that year was the AeroPress coffee maker. You grab a mug, put one of the filters in the bottom of the press, scoop the coffee grounds into the press, then fill to the line with hot water (not boiling, just hot enough to make tea). You then stir the grounds and water, plunge the water through the grounds and you've got an espresso.
You need to dilute the espresso with hot water to get a regular coffee, or dilute it with stirred milk for a cappuccino. I mostly enjoy being able to make my own cappuccinos and save from buying them at gas stations. You can brew up to 4 espressos, use 1 or 2 for your cappuccino and refrigerate the rest for later.
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