Espresso saga

A couple of weeks ago our espresso machine died. I don't know what's wrong with it. And I am not the most mechanical of men - not really one to take a something apart and fix it. So, I am not quite sure how to find out the problem. I cleaned it real good. Descaled it and all. But, alas... nothing. I talked to the tech people over the phone and they told me it was out of warranty. Of course. They were not much help. They told me it could be this one thing... but, then again it might not. And, the part that might fix the machine is on back order for a few weeks. Lovely.

I know that the responsible thing for me to do is to wait patiently for the part to come in and see if it does the job. That would the reasonable thing to do. What I have actually been doing is waiting rather impatiently and searching the Internet to find a good deal on a better espresso machine... an upgrade. Nothing so far. The machine I had was already pretty nice. An upgrade would cost lots of $. I can't really justify it. We only do a couple of espressos per day.

So, I am trying something new - a stove top espresso maker. I picked one up at a discount store last night. It was super cheap - not much of a loss if it turns out to be a dud. I have always been a bit leery about stove top espresso makers. I am a bit fuzzy on the physics of the whole thing. (But, in all honesty, it doesn't take much to make me fuzzy about the physics of anything.)

And, I read somewhere that stove top espresso machines are what real Italians use in thier homes. I have always wanted to be like a real Italian.

We tried it out this afternoon. Not bad. Not bad. It would probably be more accurate to call it really, really strong coffee instead of espresso since there is no crema on the top (that dense foam on the top of properly extracted espresso). But the flavor was good. I think it should make good "iced Americanos" (which is our favorite summertime drink).

So, I think we may have found a substitute until our machine gets fixed.

It's a good day.