It seems to me there are generally two trends in coffee. The kind of hipster-y home-brew space, where people use an aeropress or something similar (hand filter, chemex, french press) and spend a bit more on fresh beans and a grinder, and the high price coffee machine, where you spend hundreds to thousands on a machine that can do it all but does not necessarily produce good coffee on its own.
It just seems the coffee industry has succeeded in making people believe that good and easy to produce coffee requires expensive equipment. The many discussions I had where people insisted they needed an expensive machine because 30 seconds hand grinding and pour over in the morning was "just too much" and would not believe that fresh beans from their local roasters are actually cheaper than some pads or pods.
Of course, not talking espresso here, where entirely different equipment is necessary.
> It just seems the coffee industry has succeeded in making people believe that good and easy to produce coffee requires expensive equipment
What are you referring to here? The only expensive coffee equipment I see regularly in people's homes is the espresso machine. But your last sentence implies that's not what you mean. What other expensive coffee makers are people using?
I am talking about pad/pod machines, where the machine is not prohibitively expensive, but of course a lot compared to a hand filter or other simple coffee making device, and the coffee is of course ridiculously expensive.
Around here (Germany) many people also have coffee machines that automatically grind and brew the coffee. At a few hundred euros they are again not prohibitively expensive, but most people still feel they need them to get one or two cups of coffee a day.
I just met far to many people who believe if your machine costs several hundred euros and your coffee comes out of a pod it must be better than anything you brew by hand and of course brewing by hand takes infinite times longer. Maybe people are more reasonable where you are? Or you just know more knowledgeable coffee lovers than I do. ;-)
Yeah, not sure. I'm in Australia and people here tend to take espresso pretty seriously. I generally either see stove-top coffee makers or espresso machines.
There are probably a lot of people that use pod-based machines, but perhaps just not among my friends. (Personally I think pod-based coffee should be banned for environmental reasons.)
Of course, not talking espresso here, where entirely different equipment is necessary.