The ultimate cup of coffee without the aid of pods - recommendations?

[puddle]

Am thinking about a gaggia but have no idea really.

We have a very cheap and boring coffee machine thus and if you use a paper filter and put good coffee in, you get good coffee out. Do still have to heat the milk in the microwave though.

Also dead easy to use and takes up very little space...

friends of mine have a gaggia - the basic one, they said the ones with bells and whistles are pants

another friend has an amazing catering one which makes THE BEST coffee, when Ihave 300 squid to spare I am definitely getting one

we have a baby gaggia & it's lovely. gets very heavy usage (probably 4+ cups/day). we've had it for a year with no problems (we have broken several coffee machines before.... and have very hard water). are you near any decent department stores? john lewis or house of fraser will show them all to you, & you normally get free coffee .

(psst, Enid, Gaggia sell reconditioned machines for about half the price - here and click 'shop')

this is ours

you need a milk frother definitely

the little whisk one or the pot with a frothy lid

pot is harder work but better froth

we have a stovetop espresso pot but it's a bugger to clean; already have a thread going about this this morning

makes lovely lovely coffee though

i have the bog standard gaggia (the cubika), its not pretty but it does work well

I have a Mukka express from Bialetti. It makes brilliant stove-top cappu at a fraction of the cost of an electric espresso maker. Also you can use it to make standard espresso. It is a bit fiddly to clean though. May be the one mentioned by someone else.

Enid do you mean the cubika?

hoxton are they hard to clean?

def want a plug in thing rather than a stove top job.

no. you just have to empty & rinse the drip tray occsionally. suspect we should run through some kind of de-scaling thingy but haven't got round to it yet....

Was on the same quest last year. Did quite a bit of research. Went for the Gaggia Classic as it seemed to be quite robust(a must for us due to the thrashing it gets in the morning) and came out well in several reviews. Also I think the design has been around for quite a while. Apparantly the Cubika is a bit flimsy and has a tendancy to break. Our Classic has been great so far not a whimper, fantastic coffee. The best coffee we used is Illy but dp put his foot down and said I had to down grade to Sainsbury's Espresso(sulk) which seems to be the best of the others we tried. Half the price, but no pretty tin!!!

i agree about using decent coffee, which needs to be ground to the right consistency. we go for lavazza.