Coffee-Runs are the latest office time-waster

Coffee-Runs the latest office time-waster NEWS.com.au Business

Had to chuckle about this story from Australia where businesses are investing in coffee machines to prevent staff disappearing on coffee-runs. By coffee machines, I'm presuming they aren't talking about the standard office-issue drip filter machine. I'm well acquainted with the coffee-run at my place of work which is affectionately called the "Bucks Run". I'm not sure if the recent arrival of a Starbucks across the street means more or less loss in productivity at the office; before it took a ride in a car to the nearest Starbucks which may have meant only the hard core were doing it on a regular basis during office hours, but now that there's a Starbuck's across the street, perhaps more people are doing coffee-runs on the basis that it's "just across the street". How can blame them, too! The office coffee is after all horrible beyond belief! It's only pure addiction on my part that sees me drinking a cup or two of it per day.

For American readers, the reference to "smoko" in the article may need some explantion. I only know what it means because I grew up in New Zealand which shares the same brand of Downunder English. "Smoko" is a term that refers specifically to a smoke break, and more generally to a break from work whether focused on smoking or not.

A New Gaggia Evolution and Water Evaporater for Me

Right from the time I launched this site I recommended the Gaggia Evolution as an excellent espresso maker for the home. My recommendation for this espresso maker came from my personal use of the machine.

Recently I decided to buy a new Gaggia Evolution since my old one had been pumping out the shots for about two-and-a-half years and was starting to lose the ability to create the good crema I remembered from the early days. I wish the machine had a meter on it to record how many shots I had pulled with this machine over 30 months or so, but it would be something like 3000 as I probably average about 3 double pulls a day. At about $250 for the machine, that's about only 8 cents per shot! Now that's a bargain, don't you think!

On top of that I estimate my beans cost me about 35 cents per double shot. So that's approximately 43 cents per double shot of espresso. Compare that to what it costs at Starbucks!

So the machine well and truly paid for itself many times over. Obviously, since I bought a Gaggia Evolution all over again, I'm a committed believer, and as I mentioned in my original recommendation, the Evolution was the 5th espresso machine I had purchased over the years, and it was by far the best all things considered, and outlasted all the others.

One of the things that shortens the life of an espresso maker is the build up of lime within the internal plumbing of the machine. Despite regular cleaning with something like Cleancaf, the lime deposits eventually build up more and more meaning your machine can no longer build up the pressure to turn out the crema you were getting when it was new.

Other than regular cleaning, which I have to admit you have to be pretty disciplined to do regularly, another option is to use water with as little lime and mineral content as possible.

Distilled water is the perfect answer to this as distillation leaves behind all the minerals in the vessel in which the water is boiled. You've probably seen this inside of a kettle. So, for that reason I just ordered last night from Amazon.com one of these counter-top water distillers. The reviews are very favorable overall and someone did some calculations of what it costs in terms of electricity per gallon of water at about 25 cents. That even beats Costco's bottled water, it's better for the environment since it doesn't have to be bottled and transported, and it's mineral free! This way I hope to not have to clean my machine so often and get it to last even longer.