Make Your Espresso Drinks at Home

There are many articles about saving money by making your own coffee at home. But they’re about making drip coffee. What if you prefer the more sophisticated, cafe espresso drinks, which require more skill to make? Isn’t that why you spend the extra $3 – $4 a day to buy it from Starbucks?

How much does your daily latte or mocha cost you? $3 – $4 a day? $21 – $28 a week? $84 – $112 a month? What if you made your espresso drinks at home or even at work?

You don’t even need an expensive espresso machine! In fact, I’ll admit, I’m afraid of the espresso machine, especially the frothing feature. It’s loud and screaming hot. You can burn yourself if you’re not careful. And it takes a lot of skill to use it.

The way I make espresso drinks at home is fairly easy.

The tools you need to make espresso drinks:

2 skills to master to make any espresso drink:

1. Make espresso in a moka pot

What’s a moka pot? It’s an alternative way to make espresso without a machine. It’s a pot with a spout and handle and below it is a chamber where you place the and water and coffee grounds in a filter.

When you place the moka pot over a stove, the water boils and pushes through the coffee grounds above it and into the pot above. It’s basically the opposite of a coffee machine in that the direction of the water goes from bottom to top.

Note: With a brand new moka pot, be sure to season it first by brewing espresso in it 7 times. A few times, I reused the ground espresso beans because I was lazy. It doesn’t matter. After the 7th brew, you’ll “taste” the difference.

2. Steam milk using an electric milk frother

This product heats and froths milk at the same time. It plugs into any outlet. Add milk up to the line and push the button. The frother stops automatically after about a minute.

It’s really fast and really simple! Choose from 2 attachments, one for steaming and light froth and the other attachment for thick, creamy froth. An electric frother froths way better than any frothing wand.

You can use it to steam and froth milk at work as well as make hot cocoa or chai latte. I’ve had mine for over 3 years.

It will be a small investment at first for some of these products, but if you’re making your own espresso drinks 5 – 7 days a week, you’ll recoup that in a month or two.

Check out these Espresso Drink Recipes