Or, as I see the mountain of stuff required to make high-quality specialty coffee at home, I may do what James Hoffman does and just do drip coffee. There is wisdom in the old, simple ways, and the $4k you can easily spend on a full setup is 1000 espressos made by a professional with bar better, more consistent equipment and tons of practice.

There are a lot of coffee shops near me. I'm surprised at how bad some of the espressos are, a lot too sour, some too bitter. Prices keep going up. You can count the break even point in terms of money, sure, but in my house, the espresso machine paid for itself almost instantly in terms of satisfaction.

But for not much more money you can get an affordable electric burr grinder (like the Delonghi KG79) which will give a good, consistent grind with much less effort than a hand grinder.