The way I see espresso is high risk : high reward. I already gave you my hack: buying pregound espresso so that makes it fairly forgiving but you take a hit in quality. The question is preground in the Gaggia vs Nespresso. Might be a close battle. There are some pretty good cheaper pre ground coffees that worked well for me and best place to buy is
Amazon in quantity packs. Cafe Bustelo was tasty and REALLY cheap but our go to is below. As I said though, if went to the cafe and had beans ground it was much better than preground. I typically did this day before around holidays and special occasions. Not sure if this matters, but your house will definitely take on a cafe smell after routinely brewing and people would remark on it. I did a little digging and found a post in an espresso forum that really resonates my take:
"here's the scoop, as I see it:
Nespresso makes a pretty good drink, very reliably, time after time, with very little effort. And for all practical purposes, the little capsules never go stale.
You
can get a better drink out of a Gaggia Classic, but most people (not most people
here, I hasten to add, just 'most people')
won't. Because to make a better drink than Nespresso, you basically have to become a real barista. You have to become something of a coffee nutter, like us. You have to buy fresh beans on a regular basis. You have to grind them yourself. You have to get good at little skills like dosing, leveling and tamping, and you have to do all of these things consistently, not just once in a while when you feel like making extra special effort.
If you are
not a coffee nutter, willing (nay, eager) to do all those things, fairly obsessively, in order to get your coffee just-so, then the Gaggia will, in general, produce less-tasty results than the Nespresso (and can easily produce downright-bad drinks). And the Gaggia will
always be more effort to use and clean up than the Nespresso.
If you simply want pretty decent drinks and not a new hobby, I'd suggest the Nespresso.
If you do see yourself being or becoming at least something of a coffee hobbyist, then the Gaggia will serve you well. But buying it will be only the beginning of your journey."
