Fuck it, my essay trigger finger is getting itchy..

If you want good coffee, you can either go to any of the cafe's mentioned above, OR, you can do it at home.

I'm talking about a home coffee setup. TO do it properly, you need a manual machine and a burr grinder. DO NOT use pre-ground.

You can get into a home setup for under a grand, the Sunbeam Cafe Series espresso machine and burr grinder is a good way to do it.

It also comes down to whether you want quality or convenience.

Convenience - super-automatic machine
Quality - A decent manual machine and burr grinder.

I always recommend buying and mastering a manual machine. The results speak for themselves, you'll get a better coffee out of a $600 manual espresso machine and $200 burr grinder than an $8000 automatic.

I've got a Rancilio Silvia espresso machine with an electronic PID controller and 2x Rancilio Rocky burr grinder, with a stainless base station and it cost me under $2k. I will put money on my coffee bettering that of 99% of cafe's out there, as well as 100% of automatic machines.

As you go up in price, you'll get more consistency between shots, and repeatability in a large number of shots...for example, I can't pull 20 shots in a row with my machine without waiting for temps to stabilise, but with a machine thats maybe $2,500 (plus grinder) and has dual boilers or single boiler/heat exchanger, it'll do it.

It all comes down to the quality of the bean, the grind, the distribution and the tamp. You can own a $20,000 Synesso Cyncra PID-Controlled, rotary pump, 4 group machine, but if you use pre-ground coffee, shit beans or a shit grinder, the coffee won't even be as good as a $250 home machine.

If you're willing to drink your coffee at about half the quality of a manual machine, at the press of a button, automatic machines are the way to go. THAT BEING SAID THOUGH, 99% of people don't know what a 100% perfect artisan coffee is i.e. one made absolutely perfectly by a pro barista, so to most, an auto machine makes excellent coffee. It's all about perspective.

This is one of mine..