when coffee prices go back down, i'm going to keep buying espresso and use it in the single serve. i just have to make it correctly, which is to put boiling water in the machine 

that espressso-coffee worked so well that i didn't fall asleep until 9:00 am. that's two scoops of espresso in the black and decker single serve, with boiling coffee in the machine, and chocolate soy to mocha latte it up. yikes.

i also opened up the hole in the reusable filter a tad so that it flows faster, which makes sense for espresso.

i'll keep making normal coffee in the larger maker and keep the single serve just for espresso. 

that's what this thing is engineered to do, the engineers just didn't realize it. real coffee just makes a mess, but the espresso with boiling water works flawlessly and creates an extremely potent cup, but is probably better for 10 am than 10 pm.