Why I Make My Espresso the Manual Way

Coffee is one of the great flavours in our lives.

Depending on your view, it is either fuel for the engine, a crutch, or both.

I am a two-per-day kind of person, and not after 2pm. Any more and I get the jitters, and it keeps me awake. An emergency third shot only happens when I need to stay conscious, and I generally pay for it afterwards.

Anyway, this article is not about my caffeine sensitivity.

I want to tell you about how I make my espresso, and why.

I use a hand-pull lever.

Done properly, it takes a minimum of 15 minutes, and there are 12 different pieces of kit involved. Believe it or not, that is probably conservative compared to some of the people on Instagram reels.

Why I Make It the Slow Way

In one sense, it is self-limiting. If I had a Nespresso machine, it would be too easy to drink more whenever I hit that little energy dip in the day.

I cannot squeeze in making my espresso. I need to light the hob, heat the kit, weigh and grind the beans, and handle the whole process with care and in the right order.

As a daily ritual, it grounds me.

I like that it is not easy and, if I am not concentrating, it goes wrong and I end up with no coffee or bad coffee. Not a great outcome, but when attention is so hard to corral these days, this little exercise, done with my hands, is grounding.

If I make it in a rush, it is worse. Sometimes done is better than perfect though, especially during the morning shuffle with the kids and school run.

I also like that I will own this lever for life. It is highly unlikely to break. Minimal moving parts. Maintenance is almost non-existent. It is portable. I can take it anywhere and, if I have a heat source, my espresso on the campsite is as good as in the house.

Lessons from the Espresso Machine

Nowadays, with technology where it is at, everything becomes easier. Some are ahead of others, but before long almost anyone will be able to make almost anything in little to no time. Software businesses will converge and disappear. The gains super-users get will diminish.

What is left? I do not think it will be far off the coffee industry.

You can go to a big franchise: overpriced, caffeine-jacked, a range of monstrosity drinks orbiting a low-quality core offer. This is the generic vendor experience. Consumer-level. Available everywhere, loved by no one in particular.

You can go to a snobby, hipster independent and get great quality. A curated experience for people who seek it out. Higher price, specialist tools, barista-level skill required. But this is where the best coffee is. I suspect this is also where software development ends up: accessible to fewer people, but genuinely excellent for those who get there.

Or you can make your own. Here you will have everything from instant granules and filter coffee through to pod machines, high-end home set-ups, and people who have bought commercial equipment for their kitchen.

The experience is what you choose it to be.

Do you want speed or quality? Convenience, or are you prepared to invest time for a better outcome? Do you care about taste? Is this a want or a necessity?

The Lane I’m In

Timeless, bulletproof technology based on high temperature and high pressure. It will never break. I can take it anywhere. I get a good outcome 50% of the time, an outstanding outcome 40% of the time, and 10% of the time it goes wrong but only of my own making.

I am never trying to keep up with the Joneses either. There is something in that. Divorcing yourself from the relentless noise to go faster, make everything easier, and always be upgrading. There are fundamentals we should be wary of replacing.

Coffee is one of them for me. My espresso set-up weathers power outages and technical faults. I never need to upgrade it. It stays with me for life. I just need to put a little time and skill into it.

And it is a journey. My espresso continues to improve. I will try different beans and need to dial it in differently. I could always upgrade the grinder or the scales. But fundamentally, I can make espresso to a standard very close to a high-end independent. It is way better than any chain, and a different class of drink entirely to anything automatic or granule-based.

My AI Psychosis

This is how I am thinking about AI.

I heard Karpathy talk about his own “AI psychosis” - the disorienting sense that everything is accelerating and you are not sure what to hold onto. Him having it made me feel a little better. If one of the best minds in the field is unsettled by the pace of change, I am allowed to feel it too.

My espresso ritual has given me a frame for it.

Grounding yourself in timeless principles. Safeguarding against things that could go wrong. Choosing resilience over convenience where it matters.

Not every part of your life or your business needs to be optimised. Some things are worth doing slowly, by hand, with care. Not because you cannot automate them, but because the act of doing them is itself the point.

This, I think, is how entrepreneurs and businesses should be curating their strategies moving forward.

Shooting for the best quality, but with resilience built in. Slow productivity. Anti-hustle. Lean.