Scorching hot water passes through the ground coffee to produce a small portion of espresso, a richly textured, intensely flavored espresso.
That's exactly what it sounds like. You simply heat the water to near boiling point (92°) and let it flow through a fixed amount of coffee powder in the handle. The pressure required for the water to flow through the powder is extremely high, about 9 atmospheres. At such high pressure than other brewing methods, the water stream extracts more substances from the beans, especially coffee oil crema and soluble solids.
The principle may seem simple, but the surface is often deceiving. The process of making espresso is full of complex variables, and it only takes one of these details to change for the quality of the finished product to suffer. That's why the coffee professionals we call baristas are as passionate about the craft as they are about their religion.
Today's article begins with the origins of espresso and how it has taken the world by storm, transforming it into a small, everyday drink in the hands of thousands of people.
Cooking a cup of coffee with technology
Espresso is arguably the best of Italian culture, and it's trending into the world's culture, so you might be shocked if we told you that espresso doesn't have a long history.
The espresso machine that makes espresso was introduced in the early 1900s, however, it has since gone through a number of refinements by different people, the most important being in 1948, when a machine refined by Achille Gaggia used high pressure to propel a stream of water through finer grounds to extract the coffee oils favored by espresso fans.
Twin sisters show off a Gaggia espresso machine with a double-pull lever in London in 1958.
The espresso machine, a masterpiece of the steam era
It wasn't until 1948 that espresso, as we know it, was finally introduced. Since then, Italian café culture has taken off, and in the movies and books of the 1950s and 1960s, cafés were always the setting for the stories. Hipsters and loafers of all stripes were hooked on a drink that hadn't been around for long.
Relativity in the Universe
In fact, it wasn't the demand for better coffee that led to the birth of espresso, but rather a business conundrum. At the time, with most traditional brewing methods, it took a long time to brew a good cup of coffee: at least five minutes, and possibly more. While it was also possible to brew a lot at once and keep it warm on a heat source, that was the equivalent of leaving coffee brewed at 10 a.m. in the coffee maker until noon. Anyone who has tried it will tell you that this kind of coffee is hard to drink. If your customers are on their way to work and are already impatient, making them stand there for 10 minutes is obviously not a good sales strategy.
[Early espresso machine advertisement] There's no time to stop: the demand for a fast product and the quest for the perfect espresso have gone hand in hand from the beginning.
The 19th century is also known as the Age of Steam because all technological advances at that time were driven by steam power. To make coffee faster, inventors also looked to steam. 1884 saw the first patent application by Angelo Moriondo of Turin, Italy, a businessman and inventor with a café. He invented the first steam-driven espresso machine, but did not improve on it afterward.
A working coffee machine in a Reggio cafe in 1942. This photo was taken by Marjorie Collins, who worked for the U.S. Government's Bureau of War Information and was able to take this photo because of his involvement in a project to document the daily lives of Americans.
The next important twist in the history of the espresso machine came in 1901, when a Milanese man named Luigi Bezzera improved on the previous design (and patented it the following year). Two important new inventions were the brewing head and the handle, which contained coffee powder pressed into a "puck", through which the water flowed under high pressure during brewing. To this day, these two designs are still the centerpiece of the espresso machine.
Mr. Becerra could not afford (or maybe he just didn't have the money) to produce his machine on a large scale and on an industrial scale. But in 1905, another Milanese, Desiderio Pavoni, bought Bezzella's patents and, in collaboration with Bezzella, started to produce the machine in Milan. His company was called La Pavoni, and the names Pavoni and Bezerra have been passed down to this day as the brand names of 2 espresso producers.
Several antique espresso machines in the La Mazzucco coffee shop in Florence, Italy.
The barista is no less important than the machine itself.
Early espresso machines had some limitations that make it difficult to please today's coffee consumers. For example, the water in the machine was heated by an open flame, and the finished product would be tainted with the smell of smoke from the burning fire. And the pressure that could be generated inside these machines with their huge domes was only about 2 atmospheres, nowhere near the 9 atmospheres of modern equipment.
Early "hot moms" had a maximum pressure of 3 atmospheres.
But none of these drawbacks seem to matter, because they have provided the key to ensuring the development of espresso: it's quick to make and quick to drink. It was not only popular in Italy, but also in continental Europe, and Italians who traveled around the world took the coffee global.
When Cafe Reggio in Greenwich, Manhattan opened in 1927, the store still had their first espresso machine, made in 1902. It was the owner of this café, Domenico Parisi, who is said to have introduced the cappuccino to the U.S. In 1933, Illycaffè was founded, a company that is still active today and specializes in the production of coffee beans used to make espresso. The company's founder, Francesco Illy, also invented a coffee machine.
Early one morning in London in the 1950s, a customer in a hurry shaved while waiting for his espresso to be ready.
Thanks to the revolutionary espresso machine introduced by Milanese Achille Gaggia in 1948, the espresso we're all familiar with is here. The Gaggia machine (which is still in production today) involves boiling water from a small boiler inside the machine, then using pressure to squeeze the hot water into an even smaller space that is exactly the volume of one espresso. The barista pulls a lever on the machine, which creates a force of 9 atmospheres inside the machine to press the water out. That's why they say "pulling a shot" in English.
A vintage espresso machine photographed by Afine at the Dutch Coffee Show.
The amount of water in each shot is the same. With the help of enormous pressure, the machine extracts compounds that create the espresso's signature coffee oils, the tan-colored layer of foam on the surface of the coffee that a good espresso should have.
The Gaggia coffee machine is much smaller than its predecessors, making it easier to transport. This huge advancement in the drawbar design paved the way for the massive introduction of espresso into Europe and the United States. After Gaggia, the development of the espresso machine was followed by a new model called the Faema E61 in 1961. The lever on this machine was replaced by an electric pump, and the brewing water could be piped in instead of coming directly from the machine's built-in boiler. This design eliminated the step of pulling the lever, and any barista could simply press a button and the brewing would take place automatically.
Obviously, espresso machines have gone through countless evolutions since 1961. If you want to learn about this entire history, talk to two coffee freaks. In the "third wave" of coffee, the frenzy over brewing hardware and bean-growing details pervaded cafes across the globe, from Sydney in the southern hemisphere to Stockholm in the northern hemisphere. But, at the end of the day, the barista who operates the machine is no less important than the machine itself, and this has been true throughout the history of espresso.