GoKawiilis a deputy editor and Verge co-founder with a passion for human-centric cities, e-bikes, and life as a digital nomad. He’s been a tech journalist for 20 years.
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As summer returns, I’m again reminded of my limits as I head into the great outdoors: I can put up with a heavy, uncomfortable backpack, bug bites, mud, and even bland dehydrated food, but I will not forsake my morning brew.
I’ve tried every imaginable coffee gadget in my half-century of camping. These range from simple drip systems when ultralight backpacking, an AeroPress when not weighing every gram, French press plungers when assisted by bicycle, and small countertop coffee makers when adventuring by van. Yet I keep returning to handheld espresso makers whenever possible for reasons of taste, convenience, and — let’s face it — gadget appeal. These portable, thermos-sized machines offer a decent approximation of a real, pulled espresso when there’s no barista for miles.
Behold! The Ikape Kapo K2 Pro.
There are two ways to go here. The cheapest, fastest, and easiest-to-clean models are built around Nespresso coffee capsules — you pour cold water in, press a button, and voila, liquid gold. More expensive models use ground coffee and target people who argue over things like blade versus burr grinders. Or you can get the best of both worlds with a hybrid machine that works with both coffee grounds and capsules. It doesn’t really matter which logo you buy because they all seem to share a common factory somewhere in China. Cera+ and OutIn are popular brands, but you’ll probably also be fine picking from the dozens of cheaper, alphabet-soup names found on Amazon.
I recently tested the Ikape Kapo K2 Pro (58mm) portable espresso machine from Cera+. It’s listed for $239 but is sold on Amazon for $200. It only works with ground coffee, but it allows you to dial in your preferred taste through granular controls over temperature, flow speed, and the length of time you want the grounds to pre-soak, stand, and extract. It features a powerful 20-bar pump and a 13,500mAh battery that recharges over USB-C. In my testing, it’s good for about five 18-to-20-gram extractions when starting with cold water. You’ll get many more if you preheat the water or use less of it. Each extraction takes about three minutes, give or take, depending upon how much water you add to the 80ml (2.7oz) reservoir.
A $5,000 La Marzocco vs. the $200 Ikape. Using freshly ground beans, the espresso produced by the La Marzocco, on the left, had far more crema but tasted remarkably similar to the Ikape. There’s a lot to manage and clean when brewing real espresso on the go. Maybe just get a portable Nespresso instead? The Ikape extraction “tiger tailing,” which I’m told is important for a good espresso.
In a blind taste test against a friend’s expensive La Marzocco espresso machine, the Ikape performed surprisingly well. Two of us plebes couldn’t taste any difference, but the owner of the fancy machine confidently could, citing a more sour and less full-bodied result from the Ikape. Mind you, we’re talking $199 versus $5,000, and even he had to admit that the handmade Italian machine didn’t produce an espresso that was 25 times better!
On the other hand, when testing the Ikape with store-bought coffee grounds, it produced a rather lackluster espresso that wasn’t much better than what you’d get from a Nespresso capsule. To get the most out of the Ikape you’ll need to carry along a grinder, which undermines its portability.
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