Coffee Makers — The Best Dopamine Loops I Can Find

You wake up at 7am everyday, you drag yourself out of bed for another day at the corporate hellscape and your bunny slippers don’t spark the same joy you felt when you bought them. You go into your kitchen and the thought of making breakfast for the 234th day in a row just feels like more work.

But there’s one shiny thing in the corner that you relish fiddling with- the coffee maker. Hitting that power button feels like an instant rush of dopamine. And Casabrews’s CM5418 is the only midrange one that does the trick.

The Ritual

You turn on the machine and it whirs to life.

You got a cute coffee grinder off of Amazon that looks like a little gumball machine, spitting out the powder like a little reward from the tooth fairy.

You fill up your portafilter and it clicks into place with a satisfying “tick”.

Pull the shot, it pours right into the pretty ceramic mug you got at a farmer’s market 2 years ago, handmade and glazed pink.

The soy milk you splurge on is ready to go in the little metal cup for frothing, the wand always makes a little noise, it wakes you up.

And you curl up on the stiff bar stools your parents thought you’d like in the new apartment and sit for 15 minutes, no thoughts, head empty, drinking a warm cuppa.

The Machine

It’s pretty simple, you don’t need a thousand dollar barista level machine to get the dopamine hit. You need something that works, something that sticks around through the two hundred and thirty four days you’re making yourself breakfast. The Casabrews does that and does it well.

Its compact. Its shiny.

The frother wand is strong, and not comically too long for the mug.

The shot pull isn’t as loud as an airplane trying to land on the tarmac.

It’s not as temperamental as your boss on a Monday morning, never watery, never thick as molasses. Always just right.

It’s easy to clean, nooks and crannies are not too small for a rag to get into and chuck everything else into a dishwasher.

Get yourself a grinder, nothing fancy and invest in an artisanal bag of beans from that indie coffee shop in the city.

The Dopamine

I think as the world moves into this stage of hyper capitalism, of our lives being ruled by the digital clock on your boss’s smart watch, we all sense a shift back to analog.

Doing things by hand, this pull towards taking the time to fulfill an early morning ritual. If that ritual has the end product of a jolt of caffeine to the system so you can go work as a cog in the machine, that’s just how the cookie’s crumbled.

Doesn’t mean it’s not progress towards the right direction.