What to do? Get myself a quality coffee machine or continue enjoying the morning social scene that goes with sitting at a café drinking a barista made beverage? The decision is more complex than you think. Rex Patrick explains.
First things first, I’m not ‘coffee pretentious’. When it comes to coffee I’ve been subjected to worse than most. Submerged for weeks-on-end in a submarine involved instant coffee mixed with long shelf-live UHT milk and enough sugar to make it drinkable. I feel a little entitled to drink good coffee after 11 years of such service.
Secondly, if you are after a touchy-feely read on coffee choices – move to the next article. I don’t do soft pieces. This article will deliver the frothy facts.
The costs
A really good, highly automated, kitchen bench coffee machine can come in at over $4,000. So, economic considerations are a must.
If I factor in the beans, water, filters, milk and cleaning products, having two coffees each morning for a year (about $2.80 per day, amounting to $1000 per annum), and the machine price, home-made coffee comes in at $5000 a year.
With the average cost of a café coffee in Australian major cities being $5.50, having two café coffees a day comes in at $5015.
So, it’s break even after the first year.
Thereafter the home coffee machine saves me about $4000 a year.
But it’s not just about the cost. There’s more to it than that.
Social benefits
Extroverts can’t stay at home just to save money. And neither can the introvert.
I’m an introvert. As a former senator I can, of course, talk in front of a large crowd or on TV or radio, but when it comes to choosing the lodging of a freedom of information request or reading a law text book over most social event, I’ll take the former.
But I do enjoy ‘people watching’; observing people around me in how they talk, behave, dress and interact with one another. I don’t even mind striking up a conversation with a local from time-to-time.
It’s worth something, especially for some who works-from-roam. Part of my motive for taking to the road was to work from a different café with a different view each day.
Work-from-roam. Transparency warrior Rex Patrick hits the road.
Quality, variety and reviews
A home machine can involve a coffee bean purchase that ultimately doesn’t do it for you. Granted, you’re not going to repeat buy those particular beans, but unless you’re prepared to throw (or give) it away, you’re stuck with it for a while.
Compare that with variety, quality and taste randomness of café choices. That’s not such a big deal if your live in one spot and know the cafés in the area, but it can be a problem when you’re perpetually travelling. Internet ratings on coffee shops can help in that regard. And if you visit a ‘shocker’, you can just move on.
I’m also told that there’s a taste difference between the exact same coffee that has been handed to you by a barista and the one that you invested grinding, tamping and steaming effort into. But maybe I can’t really go there in this article – that involves the ‘touchy-feely’ I promised I’d avoid.
But it’s factual to say that a café coffee involves no clean-up effort. But there can be a recycling/waste disposal issues, depending on the cups.
Off Grid
Another problem for me is being off-grid on occasion; that is residing a few days on the banks of the River Murray (if you’re in SA) or the Murray River (if you’re in Victoria), or stopping in the middle of no-where to enjoy the solitude and beauty of the outback.
Just north of Yunta, in outback SA (Source: Author)
If you haven’t got a coffee machine, you have to go without, unless you want to go back to instant (sorry – I just can’t go back to those submarine days).
“Doesn’t that just decide it for you”, you might say. “Coffee machine it must be!”.
But there is challenge in missing out on a daily fix, but doesn’t a bit of abstinence make that next coffee better?
Other considerations
There are other pros and cons that weigh into the choice.
Contributing to local employment can make you feel better.
Cafés are mostly mum and dad operations that employ high school and university students. That’s a plus for the café coffee that’s hard to ignore.
Space for a good coffee machine can be another issue, particularly in a caravan, and the learning curve associated with becoming a good home barista.
Oh, it’s all so hard.
Taking the plunge
I’ve been on the road for more than 60 days and have been avoiding a decision.
So, it’s time to face the music …
I’m not going to buy the almost fully automatic $4,000 coffee machine …
Instead, I’m going to drop back to something more affordable, maybe in the $1,000 to $2,000 range where I can do the grind, tamp and steam. The lower capital cost means I can, on a reasonable budget, mix and match between solitude and sociable.
My coffee connoisseur daughter, who works as a barista in a fashionable coffee shop in Sydney’s QVB, is with me this Christmas. So, I’m waiting for Boxing Day, when she’ll help me buy a new machine (hopefully on sale), set it up and teach me the trade over the next week or two.
There’ll be no more brewing over the issue for me.
And the biggest compo payout for Robodebt victims is … Scott Morrison!
Rex Patrick is a former Senator for South Australia and, earlier, a submariner in the armed forces. Best known as an anti-corruption and transparency crusader, Rex is also known as the "Transparency Warrior."