Author's posts
Jun 08 2024
Best Espresso Beans: Top Coffees for Espresso, Lattes & Cappuccinos
Great espresso starts long before you lock the portafilter into the machine. The beans determine whether your shot tastes like dark chocolate and caramel, bright cherry and citrus, roasted hazelnuts, molasses, or something in between. They also determine how well the espresso stands up to steamed milk in a cappuccino or a 12-ounce latte. But …
Jun 06 2024
Best BUNN Coffee Makers: Models, Features & Buying Guide
BUNN coffee makers are a little different from many of the programmable drip machines lining store shelves. The brand’s signature Speed Brew system keeps a reservoir of water hot inside a commercial-grade stainless-steel tank. Instead of waiting for the machine to heat an entire batch of cold water every morning, you add fresh water and …
Jun 05 2024
Best Smeg Coffee Makers: Models, Features & Buying Guide
Smeg coffee makers are difficult to mistake for anything else. Rounded edges, polished chrome details, pastel colors, and unmistakable retro styling have turned the company’s coffee machines into design pieces as much as kitchen appliances. But Smeg’s coffee lineup now extends far beyond the familiar retro drip brewer. Depending on the model, you can choose …
Jun 03 2024
What Is Espresso? History, Brewing, Crema & Popular Drinks
Espresso is small, concentrated, intensely aromatic, and responsible for an enormous portion of the modern coffee menu. A cappuccino begins with espresso. So does a latte, macchiato, flat white, mocha, Americano, cortado, and affogato. Yet despite espresso’s familiarity, there is still plenty of confusion about what it actually is. Espresso is not a type of …
Jun 02 2024
History of Coffee: Origins, Legends, Coffeehouses & Global Spread
Coffee has traveled an extraordinary distance to reach the modern kitchen counter. The plant’s deepest roots lie in Ethiopia, the first well-documented cultivation and coffee-drinking traditions developed across the Red Sea in Yemen, and from there coffee moved through the Islamic world, into European coffeehouses, across colonial trade routes, and eventually onto plantations throughout Asia, …
Jun 01 2024
How to Make Iced Coffee: Easy 5-Minute Recipe
You don’t need to wait overnight for cold brew—or even wait an hour for hot coffee to cool in the refrigerator—to make a genuinely good iced coffee. The easiest method is to brew hot coffee a little stronger than usual and chill it immediately over plenty of ice. You get the aromatic extraction of hot …
May 31 2024
Best Smeg Espresso Machines: Models, Features & Buying Guide
Smeg espresso machines are some of the easiest coffee appliances to recognize. The rounded bodies, chrome accents, glossy finishes, and pastel colors give many of them the company’s signature retro look. But choosing a Smeg espresso machine shouldn’t begin with deciding between cream and pastel blue. Smeg’s current U.S. espresso lineup includes several machines aimed …
May 30 2024
Best La Marzocco Espresso Machines: Models, Features & Buying Guide
La Marzocco occupies an unusual place in the home espresso world. This isn’t a brand that became famous by making inexpensive countertop appliances and later moved into espresso. La Marzocco built its reputation around professional café equipment, then adapted many of those ideas—dual boilers, saturated or integrated brew groups, rotary pumps, strong steaming systems, and …
May 29 2024
Best JURA Coffee Machines: Models, Features & Buying Guide
JURA takes a very different approach to home coffee than a traditional espresso-machine company. Instead of handing you a portafilter and expecting you to grind, dose, tamp, pull the shot, steam the milk, and clean up afterward, JURA specializes in fully automatic bean-to-cup coffee machines. Add whole coffee beans. Fill the water tank. Choose a …
May 28 2024
7 Coffee Smoothie Recipes: Mocha, Vanilla, Peanut Butter & More
Coffee and smoothies solve two very different morning problems. Coffee provides the familiar roasted flavor and caffeine many of us want first thing in the morning. Smoothies make it easy to blend fruit, milk, yogurt, oats, nut butter, or other ingredients into something cold and portable. Put the two together and you get a coffee …
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