My espresso machine died at 6am this morning and I almost lost it

I was halfway through my morning routine when my 8 year old Gaggia just stopped heating up, no warning, just a blinking red light. After 20 minutes of panic and some YouTube videos I realized the thermostat switch was fried and now I'm waiting for a $12 part from Amazon. Anybody else have a daily essential fail on them at the worst possible time and how did you handle it without losing your mind?

2 comments

Log in to join the discussion

Log In

2 Comments

terryb114mo ago

...and honestly the worst part isn't even the machine breaking, it's that sudden realization you're about to have a terrible morning with no backup plan. I've got a little hand grinder and a pourover cone stashed in the back of the cabinet for situations exactly like this, but when that red light blinked at me I still went through all five stages of grief in about 90 seconds. My old Gaggia threw a fuse once on a Sunday morning and I ended up boiling water and doing a makeshift aeropress with a paper towel filter, which felt like some kind of survivalist coffee experiment. Hope that $12 part gets there fast for you, because waiting for Amazon to save your morning is its own special kind of slow torture.

1

ellis.susan4mo ago

Gasped out loud when I read that paper towel filter part, @terryb11. Honestly that's some next level MacGyver stuff right there. I would have just given up and cried into a mug of hot water pretending it was coffee. You're braver than me for sure. Ngl though, that survivalist coffee experiment comment had me laughing because I've definitely been there with the boiling water and some questionable makeshift setup. It's wild how quickly a normal morning turns into a full on crisis over a cup of coffee. Hope your Gaggia never throws another fuse at you on a Sunday.

7