The Modern Luddite

The “latte factor” refers to the cumulative cost of purchasing coffee from high-street vendors. Every morning you visit Pret, Starbucks, or Costa for your tall-skinny-mocha-frappucino, you fork out a little. Maybe £1 or £2, maybe more? But if you’re like me, that’s every morning, and quite often at lunch time as well. So maybe that’s £4 per day. And that’s £20 per week, if you only do it on weekdays! Of course it doesn’t stop there. Think of the amount you spend on sandwiches at lunchtime. Maybe another £5 per day? On top of that coffee, that’s going to add up to £40-£50 per week! That’s a silly amount of cash, and that’s the latte factor. So how can you reduce it?

The obvious solution to the coffee problem is to just quit drinking coffee (or tea, or vodka, or whatever you’re partial to first thing in the morning). I’ve tried doing that, and it’s great. I noticed that I didn’t get that post-lunch slump, that sleepy feeling around 2pm. My energy levels were definitely more consistent throughout the day. So I ended up taking 6 months off coffee. Then one early morning, after very little sleep, I decided to have a sneaky cappuccino, and I loved it. Not just the taste, although I certainly love that. No, I realised that it actually improved my mood. I felt happy and full of enthusiasm for the day ahead, and that’s a feeling I don’t experience in the mornings without a little dose of caffeine. No wonder it’s the world’s most popular psycho-active drug.

So personally I have decided to carry on drinking coffee, but not to buy from high-street coffee shops if at all possible. But how to achieve that great taste of freshly brewed coffee? Simple: brew it yourself. It’s so easy. You need to make an initial outlay which amounts to far less than you’d spend on coffee during the week. I love the fact that this is so cheap it’s paid for itself within a few days!

Buy yourself a suitable coffee percolator, one that will make espresso, since this is the “base” from which most coffees are made. Your expensive latte or cappuccino starts off life as a shot of espresso. The type of percolator you buy is up to you; I use a “moka” (or “mukka”), which unscrews into two parts and is heated on the stove-top. To my mind this is the perfect addition to the Modern Luddite’s kitchen: low tech and cheap, but it does the job perfectly. One tip: if you do buy a moka-style espresso maker made of aluminium (like the one pictured), then ensure that the water-containing part is bone dry before you put it back in the cupboard, and store it in its separate parts. Otherwise a white deposit can form on the inside. It looks like mold, but apparently it’s limescale. Either way it’s not done me any harm, but it isn’t very pleasant. (Aluminium isn’t the first choice of metal for a true Modern Luddite, since it’s very expensive and hugely energy-inefficient to manufacture. You may also be concerned about health implications, but this is a controversial subject).

Shop around for your moka! You can find them in all shapes and sizes. If you’re making coffee for one, then a single-shot moka would be the most energy-efficient way to go. Although the stove-top moka is great, perhaps you want one which can plug into an electrical socket. These are likely to save you a few pennies on the heating, since the element fits the moka perfectly and won’t be heating your kitchen while you’re brewing coffee.

So you want a cappuccino, hmm? Well, there are a few ways to froth milk at home. If you’ve got a fully-fledged counter-top espresso machine, it may have a steam-spout attached, so steam that milk. Definitely the way to go for authenticity. If you feel like flexing your Modern Luddite muscles though, try a manual milk frother. These look like caffetieres into which you pour milk, then plunge the plunger frantically for about a minute, and get a reasonably frothy outcome. You could even try a hand-powered cappuccino whisk! But for me, that’s all a little fussy. The simplest choice was simply to give up cappuccino and start drinking white coffee. Sometimes I make it very milky and pretend it’s a latte, but that’s just my middle-class pretensions showing through. How about converting to black coffee? No drinking feat impresses me more than nonchalently sipping a shot of espresso without wincing.

Then there’s the actual coffee grounds. I buy packets of ground coffee and keep them in the freezer for freshness, but how about grinding your own? Imagine the smell of your own freshly ground coffee every morning! Many shops sell coffee beans, and they’re cheap to buy in bulk. If you’ve got no time to savour your coffee in the morning and prefer it on-the-hoof, then buy yourself a thermos, or a thermos-mug, and your coffee will still be hot as you stride past your coffee-shop, smug in the knowledge that you’ve saved yourself a few quid.

So why is this an act of Modern Luddism rather than just a handy hint to save pennies? Well, it’s both. This tip relies on simple, low-cost technology instead of the expensive hulking machinery you see in Starbucks. Plus it saves you time as well as money: get your moka on the stove while you have a shower in the morning and you’ll have a fresh cup of coffee waiting for you while you towel yourself dry. Plus no more queuing in the mornings at the coffee counter. But the “latte factor” refers to plenty of other things as well as coffee. What about the sandwich you buy at lunchtime, or the egg roll for breakfast. The obvious answer: make them yourself. This will save you a fortune in the long term. Cost of egg-roll: £2. Cost of ingredients per roll from local shop: maybe 50p?

It’s a no-brainer.

Incidentally, the term “latte factor” was coined by author David Bach in his book “The Automatic Millionaire”.

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