People get themselves too frothy about coffee. It's become a bit of middle-class obsession. Heaven knows, I get dragged into enough kitchens that seem to have been built around a coffee machine that looks and sounds like a dangerously over-pressured steam locomotive. It hoots, and hisses, and coughs up a shot of something that looks like tubercular sputum. Oh they look so happy, like they just milked an angel, as they tentatively hand you the teeny cup. I tell you, it mostly tastes like caffeinated grit, and have to get out that grin (the one you normally keep around for those occasions when ugly babies are thrust at you for comment).If you must drink espresso, then you need a burr grinder. Otherwise, it doesn't much matter, you don't need to grind coffee down to individual atoms to make a pot of filter coffee. I have a Cusinart coffee robot that does everything other than drink the stuff. Makes a perfect pot of coffee and could take SkyNet in a robo-fight.
