On coffee machines and why you ought to invest in one

Gone are the days when you actually had to step out to get a cup of coffee that wasn't made hastily from a jar of instant in your kitchen.

With the advent of coffee makers, spewing out quantities of espresso, cappuccino or whatever else it is you prefer, you can open your very own cafe if you feel like it. Of course, it all depends on the price you're willing to pay, but think of it in terms of how much you're going to save on not visiting the cafe round the corner every three hours (or less, if you're a coffee-holic!).

You probably didn't know that the concept of a coffee maker as we now know it - an appliance that allows you to put cold water and coffee grains in separate compartments only to have it magically combine and become coffee a few minutes later - has been around since 1800, when the French helpfully invented it, along with the process we now call pumping percolation i.e., boiling water percolates in a chamber filled with coffee grounds so it can be infused with the flavour before streaming into your cup.

There's also the famous French press, which looks thoroughly simple to use, being composed of just a glass or plastic cylinder, to which is attached a metal 'plunger' fitted with a wire mesh and a lid. It is as easy to use as it looks, but it requires a coarser grained coffee so that coffee grounds don't slip into your coffee. It is small, portable and therefore popular with travellers and looks pretty nifty too. Espresso machines are slightly more expensive, but they sometimes come fitted with a steam wand, used to froth the milk that goes into a cappuccino or a latte.

The good thing about coffee machines is that they eliminate all the tedious boiling of water, testing to see if the taste of the coffee is just right before you drink it. With a coffee machine, you just put all of the separate ingredients into one appliance and a few minutes later, you not only have a steaming cup of coffee ready with no extra work (or pans to wash) and your kitchen is filled with the wonderful aroma of coffee.

On the other hand, coffee makers do tend to be rather expensive, and if you're not the kind who needs coffee but also doesn't have much time to spend waiting for water to boil on the stove, then you might not want to invest in one. Overall though, coffee makers seem to make life easier for those of us that swear by the invigorating properties of caffeine, and since there's a lot of us, coffee makers seem destined to stay, and increasingly find a space in all of our kitchens.