We've got three coffee machines in the house. We've got a Senseo machine in the downstairs kitchen that's for the weekends. We've got two machines at the coffee-kiosk upstairs, a BrewStation for the everyday Folgers and a Nespresso machine to create the Water Of Life.

For the uninitiated, the Nespresso machine pumps heated water at high pressure through very finely ground coffee (basically coffee dust) in little disposable metal cans, resulting in about three ounces of slightly thick, slightly foamy, tasty stuff that can be quaffed as a shot or dropped into a cup of milk as a depth charge.

Today I noticed that the BrewStation had about six cups of stale coffee remaining in it, and I considered replacing the water in the Nespresso machine with the BrewStation brew, just to see what I'd get.

I would've done it, but the Nespresso is pretty pricey and it's pretty sensitive about running anything but ordinary water through it. I've already had to clean calcium out of it once, and that took forever. I don't wanna think what stale coffee would leave on the heating element. I need to get one of those $10 stovetop espresso machines for further experimentation.