Best home coffee machinesI am sick of our cafetiere (ok, I know there are greater problems in the world). And I don’t even drink coffee. No matter how well I rinse the damn thing before putting it in the dishwasher after Misery Guts has left for work, by the following morning specks of coffee have still managed to work their way into the most annoying crevices of everything else in the dishwasher, like the teats of BB’s beakers.

I’m so fed up with picking them out I think it’s time to join the rest of the coffee-drinking world and invest in a no-mess home coffee machine in time for Misery Guts’ birthday (I’m banking on him not reading this post, obviously). The only problem, apart from the fact that I don’t drink coffee and couldn’t tell you the difference between a skinny latte and a macchiato, is that I have no idea where to start. And Misery Guts is exacting when it comes to his morning coffee hit.

It seems it’s the right time of year to be looking in to it – with Christmas out of the way there are a host of pre-Christmas reviews online such as the Telegraph’s helpful 10 best coffee machines and expertreview.co.uk’s best coffee machines to buy in 2014.

But given that Misery Guts is so anal particular – he doesn’t trust anyone to make his coffee except himself, uses precisely four heaped tablespoons and despite being the world’s worst time keeper he leaves it to brew for exactly three minutes, timed on his phone – there is bound to be some foible or other with such mainstream offerings.

So given that he lavishes professional level attention to making the stuff, I decided to look for a company who make both commercial level coffee machines as well as at-home versions and came across Denby Dale Coffee. While it would be great to get an actual catering standard machine Chris Martin and Gwyneth Paltrow we’re not – more’s the pity – however tucked at the bottom of the list of the company’s industrial machines are a rather fine set of reasonably priced home ones.

So I’m rather pleased with myself for thinking outside of the box on this one. I just hope he’s equally pleased when he unwraps it…

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