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It's Wednesday, Mark, I hope the week is treating you well!
The first vacation where I was determined to have espresso anytime I wanted was back in 2002 during a car trip down the Oregon coast. In the trunk of our 1992 Celica was a Solis SL-70 espresso machine and its paired 166 grinder, to use for a full glorious week at a beachfront rental. The inclusion of cafe-calibre espresso based drinks elevated an already great vacation to one with key, salient memories I still hold to this day. I can still picture myself sitting on a windswept, seaward bench, enjoying a spectacular sunset while sipping away at a double americano in an insulated mug.
For a true CoffeeGeek, superlative espresso while enjoying nature’s glories is near nirvana. The good news is this: these days, enjoying fantastic espresso pretty much anywhere is a realistic goal.
We’ve progressed a lot in the last twenty years when it comes to espresso on the go, or espresso in tight spaces. We no longer need to rely on those travel moka pots, pre-ground coffee and car plug electric boilers, like we did twenty years ago.
Pretty much every gamut of travel espresso is covered these days. Pack a manual hand grinder, an AeroPress and a Prismo attachment, and you have a true backpack friendly near-espresso solution for the wild. If you want a bit more authentic espresso, the new Wacaco Picopresso would handle the job admirably.
Travelling with a camper-trailer or visiting a cottage without any power? There’s multiple solutions for fantastic, authentic espresso thanks to devices like the Flair espresso machines or the Cafelat Robot, both easily paired with a travel manual grinder. Flair even makes a nifty travel case for their break down models that make it very suitcase friendly.
Even if you have electrical power but not much space, you have amazing options today that simply didn’t exist even a decade ago. The machine that we’re giving away this issue (scroll down for details!), the Breville Bambino Plus, is an absolute wunderkind of espresso machine technology that sacrifices very little for occupying such a tiny space.
The B+ has much of the current day gee whiz tech you love to see in an espresso machine, including an auto frothing system that produces pourable microfoamed milk, PID temperature controls, instant-on ability and even a hot water function. Yet the machine is barely wider than most modern coffee grinders, when sitting on the counter. Match it up with svelte Baratza Encore ESP, or a capable manual grinder like the Timemore Chestnut C2, and you have an extremely compact, extremely capable hot beverage system that can fit into dorm rooms or the counters of a tiny home.
In fact, my friend Jacob, when he was fitting out his tiny home cottage in the west of Vancouver Island, chose this very machine for his coffee and tea needs. He gets the absolute luxury of looking out at the Pacific Ocean every morning, with birds chirping and serene nature sounds all around, while sipping away at near perfect espresso shots produced with minimal effort. To really bring the entire effort home, he roasts his own coffee too, using a modified campstove popcorn popper.
My cousin Jaylene has a Flair 58 lever espresso machine paired with an Aergrind manual grinder in her dorm room at an east coast Canadian University (she bought both based on my recommendations). Since setting it up, she’s become the resident coffee geek in her dorm, and hosts little coffee klatsches several times a week. Apparently it’s the best coffee on campus by a long stretch, and it’s created a lot of great memories and instances for her, meeting and making new friends.
In the very first issue of the Coffee Pulse Newsletter, I told you the best espresso I ever had in my life was one I shared with my Mum and brothers, while camping at Algonquin Park. One of the joys of espresso based drinks is the cultural resonance, and the ability to evoke feelings, memories and shared experiences.
There’s real magic in watching the morning mist rise off a tranquil lake. Or trying to spy a pod of orca whales, while settling for the crash of waves while sitting on a rocky outcrop near Port Renfrew, on Vancouver Island. The magic is increased when it is shared with family and/or friends.
As magical as those moments are, they peak even higher when I have a beautifully crafted cappuccino or espresso in hand, something that is increasingly possible these days.
It’s the stuff movie scenes are made of.
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