I struggle with sleeping in much more than she so I’m often the first one up and certainly the first one in the kitchen. She’s a coffee drinker where I prefer tea or juice most mornings but I still love to ritualistically pull down the burr grinder, carafe and French press from their top shelf and start a kettle. I fill the carafe with water as hot as the tap will allow, fill the grinder with a predetermined amount of beans and pulverize. I hate my French press, a shatterproof plastic thing lacking any sort of elegance, but I can’t bring myself to replace it.

Once the water boils, I dump the bean soil into the press then fill it up halfway and stir with a purple chopstick fated for just this purpose as its twin was lost in a move or behind the stove. Usually by the time I fill the press full, her waking noises are struggling over The Long Winters or Sonny Rollins or whatever it is I’m inflicting on a quiet morning because I’m the insensitive type who thinks that everyone within earshot should be awake if I am. I set a timer for five minutes.

I’ll dawdle for a minute, add a little water to one of the mugs I’ve collected from local coffee shops then nuke it for a minute to heat it up. Her main concern is that the coffee is strong but temperature is my obsession so I preheat every vessel. The timer alarms its noisy electronic interruption. I empty the warmed carafe, plunge the press and transfer the fresh brew. I pour her a cup, no cream or sugar, and return to find her sitting up, rubbing her eyes. She always smiles, looks up with those beautiful eyes, hands outstretched. She takes a sip and tells me she loves me.

While not a coffee drinker myself, I’m married to a caffeine junkie - one whose wish list this past holiday season included an espresso maker. So researching I went, and I’m back from weeks of pained review-scoping to tell you that the general consensus is such: if you’re looking to spend less than, oh, $1,500, espresso makers are sort of a lost cause.

Every model seems to get the same complaints: inconsistent brewing, weird controls, wonky housing that’s hard to clean, unreliable hardware that fails in a matter of months. Even when I considered that for pretty much ever household item and electronic gadget there’s a loud minority who have had a bad experience, this was still worrying - what’s the workhorse of affordable, casual espresso makers?

The answer is a bit surprising - it may be this odd-looking little thing called an AeroPress. A hybrid design between a drip brewer and a French press, it’s a small, $30 set consisting of a chamber, cap, and plunger, which you position over your cup and then apply gentle pressure to press your coffee through a filter. It takes up no counter space, requires no electricity, has no moving parts, and is as easy to clean as a measuring cup. Sure, you have to buy filters; a year’s supply will set you back a laughable $6.

But how’s the coffee, you ask? Once again, I’m not the world’s biggest coffee drinker, but the AeroPress, combined with a frother, makes the best homemade latte I’ve had. My wife loves it, as do several friends who have them. It’s also recommended by Cooks Illustrated. At $30, you don’t have much to lose, really. I hope you find you’ve found a winner, though!

My pal Geoff got snowpocalypsed in and lost power so he had to grind his own coffee beans by hand. That’s some S&F approved ingenuity!