I wake up and I open nothing. No phone, no email. I press a button on a small silver machine and wait forty seconds for it to heat up.
Those forty seconds are my favourite part of the day. I do nothing. I just wait for something that will be ready when it is ready.
My setup is boringly simple: a De'Longhi Dedica and ground coffee from Coffee Island. No €400 grinder, no precision scale, no thermometer. And it has changed my mornings more than I expected.
Why this machine
The Dedica EC685 launched in 2018 and has been the standard recommendation for a first espresso machine ever since. I recommend it too, but not for the reason you would expect.
I recommend it because it is honest. It does not pretend to be professional. No screens, no app, no fifteen programmes. One button for coffee, one for steam, and a portafilter you have to pick up with your hand.
The essentials:
- 15 cm wide. Not a detail. It fits on a counter where nothing else fits, and a machine that does not annoy you is a machine you actually use.
- Thermoblock heating, ready in about 40 seconds. Fast enough for a daily habit, slow enough that you get to stand still.
- 51 mm portafilter with pressurised (dual-wall) baskets out of the box.
- 1-litre tank, panarello-style steam wand.
- It says "15 bar" on the front. They all do. Do not read it as quality — espresso works around 9 at the puck.
It costs about what a pair of shoes costs and it will last you years if you descale it. That is the whole of the financial argument I am going to make, because it is not the point.
The coffee, and the walk
I buy it ground from Coffee Island. And the part I like is not the coffee — it is the process.
You go to the shop. You choose between blends that smell different — Volcano is darker and deeper, Silk River gentler. They grind it right then, in front of you. And you walk out with a bag that smells as if you had already opened it.
I buy small amounts, more often. Yes, because ground coffee loses its aromatics quickly. But mostly because it gives me an excuse to walk to the shop once a week and talk to someone for two minutes. In an age when everything arrives at your door, going somewhere yourself is a choice.
One practical note: ask them explicitly for an espresso grind. Not briki, not filter. Those are three completely different grinds and the wrong one ruins the coffee whatever machine you own.
What actually makes the difference
This is the interesting part, and the reason I bother at all.
Same coffee, same machine, and it comes out different. How firmly you tamped. Whether you levelled the surface first. How many seconds you let it run. Whether you flushed the group head before.
None of that can be automated. It is your hands, every day, slightly better. And that is a rare thing now: a small skill that builds slowly, is measured nowhere, and is seen by no one but you.
It reminds me why I like custom motorcycles. It is not that they go faster. It is that something passed through someone's hands.
What someone deep into espresso will not tell you
I will be honest, because otherwise this becomes an advert.
Ground coffee is a compromise. Coffee starts losing aromatics within minutes of being ground — the surface exposed to oxygen multiplies. Whole beans keep for weeks; ground coffee, realistically, for days.
And pressurised baskets are a compromise too. The dual-wall basket has a small hole that creates artificial pressure, so crema appears even when the grind is not perfect. It is clever — and it is precisely why shop-bought ground coffee works fine on it. Just know that the crema you see is partly a mechanical trick.
If you ever want to go deeper, the order is the opposite of what most people assume:
- A grinder. Not a better machine — a grinder. It changes the cup more than anything else.
- A non-pressurised basket, which only makes sense after you have a grinder.
- Then, if you want, a bottomless portafilter and the rest of the toys.
And you may never get there. That is completely fine. A Dedica with freshly shop-ground coffee is a combination that works, and "good enough every day" beats "perfect once a month".
What to watch out for
- The portafilter is 51 mm. The accessory world lives at 58. That is its real ceiling.
- The wand is a panarello. It makes foam easily, but not the velvet microfoam for latte art. If milk matters to you, look at the Dedica Arte (EC885), which has a proper professional wand.
- The thermoblock scales up. Skip descaling and that is where it will die. With maintenance, expect a comfortable 4-6 years.
When NOT to buy it
If you mostly drink cappuccino and genuinely care about the milk, go Arte. If you want to press a button and have coffee appear with no involvement at all, you want a bean-to-cup machine — and there is nothing wrong with that, it is simply a different thing. And if you already know you are going to take it seriously, something with a bigger portafilter may be worth it from the start.
But if what you are after is a daily ritual that does not ask much of you, this is the right first step.
The part that is not about coffee
Coffee out buys you a space and company. That is a good thing, I do it, and I have defended it — a café is one of the few places left where you can sit with someone for no reason at all.
Coffee at home buys something different. Ten minutes that nobody is asking you for.
The morning is the only part of the day you fully control. After that come the messages, the deadlines, the things that go wrong. Starting with something you do carefully, with your hands, without hurrying, changes the rhythm you enter the rest of the day with.
It is not the coffee. It is that for ten minutes you do one thing at a time.
Let me be honest here too: I do not manage it every day. There are mornings I start at a run and drink something standing up. But on the days I get to do it, I notice the difference.
If you have a Dedica and you have found tricks I do not know, or there is something at Coffee Island worth trying, write to me. It is one of those conversations I never get tired of.
Specifications from independent EC685 reviews; blends from the Coffee Island catalogue. Nobody is paying me for this piece — not De'Longhi, not Coffee Island. Photos: Mohamed Shaffaf, Zarak Khan, Nathan Dumlao / Unsplash — they do not show my own machine.