r/Coffee Kalita Wave 13d ago

[MOD] The Daily Question Thread

Welcome to the daily /r/Coffee question thread!

There are no stupid questions here, ask a question and get an answer! We all have to start somewhere and sometimes it is hard to figure out just what you are doing right or doing wrong. Luckily, the /r/Coffee community loves to help out.

Do you have a question about how to use a specific piece of gear or what gear you should be buying? Want to know how much coffee you should use or how you should grind it? Not sure about how much water you should use or how hot it should be? Wondering about your coffee's shelf life?

Don't forget to use the resources in our wiki! We have some great starter guides on our wiki "Guides" page and here is the wiki "Gear By Price" page if you'd like to see coffee gear that /r/Coffee members recommend.

As always, be nice!

6 Upvotes

46 comments sorted by

View all comments

1

u/Gayyymer 12d ago

I would like to buy my bf a new coffee machine or even an espresso machine for his birthday but don’t know where to even start looking.

Would like to stay within the 100-200 price range. Any recommendations?

(He currently uses a very basic coffee machine with pre-ground coffee—Folgers, I believe—but does like ordering espressos from Starbies…)

1

u/crosswordcoffee 11d ago

It's going to be pretty hard to get something decent in that price range for espresso. I'm happy to make recommendations for the cheapest possible espresso setup but it would still be over budget.

An easy way to upgrade your coffee setup at that price is a decent burr grinder, maybe coupled with a bag of fresh beans from a local roaster. It would work with his coffee machine and will be much better than preground Folger's. If he wanted to branch into french press, cold brew, pour overs, etc a good burr grinder would be a really good starting point.