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, enough about my caffeine sensitivity. I want to tell you 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 great, 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
Technology is making everything easier. Some people 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 cup? Do you care about taste? Is this a want or a necessity?
The lane I’m in
Mine is old, simple technology: high temperature and high pressure. It’s very unlikely to break and I can take it anywhere. I get a good shot 50% of the time, an outstanding one 40% of the time, and 10% of the time it goes wrong, but only through my own mistakes.
I am never trying to keep up with the Joneses either. There is something in stepping away from the constant push 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.
My espresso keeps improving. 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. Ground yourself in principles that don’t date, guard against the things that could go wrong, and choose 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 founders should be building from here. Aim for the best quality, with resilience built in. Work slowly where it counts. Stay lean.
If that’s how you want to run your business, the Leanpreneur community is a small room of operators doing the same.
