Various types of coffee machine are available. It depends what you like to drink: Some people prefer straightforward filter coffee – in this case, you’ll just need a simple drip machine, which mixes the ground coffee with water and allows the resulting brown liquid to drip slowly though a fine filter. In fact, you can even buy plastic drip filters for a single cup.
Others prefer Italian-style coffees such as cappuccino or espresso. Here, you’ll need a more sophisticated coffee maker that can produce pressurized steam. The ground coffee is pressed into a tiny funnel and attached tightly to the nozzle of the coffee maker. The steam then squeezes through the coffee producing a strong, thick, brown liquid known as espresso. These coffee makers also commonly have a separate steam nozzle for steaming milk. Adding espresso to a cup of steamed milk produces a cappuccino, and adding yet more steamed milk gives you the famed caffê latte.
Coffee makers vary widely in price. A simple drip-filter coffee maker costs as little as 50 USD, whereas expansive café-style units go for several hundred (or even several thousand) dollars.
Look out for features such as built-in water filters to save you having to descale the entire machine regularly. A pressure gauge will also help those in the know to get the perfect espresso.
Although most people won’t be making enough coffee to worry about power consumption, those buying for a business might consider looking for energy saving features. The Energy Star label is a great place to start, but also bear in mind that drip-style coffee makers often have a hotplate that keeps the coffee jug hot for hours. These might therefore waste more energy than a device that makes one cup at a time.