I love good coffee and, when I decided to stop paying $5 for a questionable quality cup of espresso, I had researched this to death. After reading the collective wisdom database from coffee forums, I came to these three important conclusions:
- Don't buy a grinder/maker combo machine, unless you're into commercial ones which cost many many many thousands of dollars;
- Coffee grinder is more important than a coffee maker; invest in the best one you can afford;
- In selecting a coffee maker, choose those ones within your budget that have separated boilers for coffee and steam.
Guys at Fratello here have been helpful (I buy my coffee beans there); but their equipment prices are quite a bit higher than online pricing, not by a few bucks, but 25-30% higher.
I've used the setup below for two years now, fairly satisfied. Grinder is super excellent. Coffee maker is good for the money, but not great. The great ones cost triple what I had paid for this one.
