I suffer from a couple vices, the most prominent being shiny gadgets, bicycles, and caffeine. My favorite purveyor of the latter comes from a dark brown substance known as coffee. Sometimes it’s hard to justify getting out of bed without the oh-so-delicious promise of coffee-induced twitchiness to get me through the rough early hours.

Lately, I’ve been living with relatives of a friend while looking for an apartment to call home. The last coffee maker I had went out with the trash while we tried to cull the unneeded belongings, and because these relatives don’t drink a lot of coffee, I truly miss having the ability to brew up a hot cup of nervous energy instead of shelling out 3 bucks at the local shop.

Not having experimented with the fancier types of machines, I leaned towards the drip-percolate style machines that your mom had on the kitchen counter, which produce a reliable if not too reliable cup of coffee, especially when paired with a digital timer and automatic start feature. Throw in a filter, a couple scoops of grounds, 2 cups of water, then “set it and forget it.”

The problem with those machines is that it’s hard to just do a single cup. You inevitably end up wasting a perfectly good filter, too much coffee, or the end product just doesn’t taste right. Now, I know about the gold filters (which I’m tempted to try but don’t have the cash for), and I don’t even want to hear about those “single-use” rip-off pods.

The point is, my current locale has one of those old-fashioned “coffee press” gizmo’s. Don’t know what I’m talking about? It’s a glass or plastic cylinder with a plunger that separates the cylinder into two compartments when depressed. It took me a couple minutes of staring and mental juggling to figure out that all you have to do is throw in however much coffee you want, then add boiling water. With those two ingredients in place, you put the lid on, slowly push the plunger down, and VOILA: the perfect amount of coffee, in a container, ready to take to the desk with you. And even better, you don’t need a single volt of electricity or a filter to make this gizmo do its thing.

Sometimes, old school just works. And I’m just a twittery mess.

If anybody is interested in acquiring one of these, don’t google like I did for “coffee plunger gizmo.” It won’t yield very good results. The technical term for this product is a “coffee press” and can be found from various manufacturers at Amazon.com. Here are the search results all ready to go, or check out these super classic designs from Bodum available in 3-cup, 4-cup, and 8-cup sizes.