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Espresso Yourself!
Traditional and Modern Italian Espresso Sets
By Michele St. Martin
While the beans are important and the grind is crucial, it's the brewing equipment that determines whether an espresso drink is mediocre, good or superb. And the Italians, who created espresso, have perfected the art of brewing it.
The Viennese, who improved on the original product by filtering this strong bitter drink, first introduced Italians to a form of Turkish coffee. After a centuries-old love affair with coffee, the Italians created and perfected the drink they called "espresso."
In spite of the fact that Frenchman Edward Loysel de Santais produced the first large steam espresso machine in the 1800s, the real breakthrough in espresso machines occurred in 1901. Luigi Bezza created an enormous restaurant machine that used trapped steam to generate roughly 22 pounds per square inch (psi) of pressure. "[It was then that] the technology and culture of caff查spresso was born," says coffee expert Kenneth Davids in his book Espresso: Ultimate Coffee (St. Martin's Griffin, 2001).
Although Bezza's machine was a real breakthrough, it still did not produce the amount of pressure needed to elicit maximum flavor from the coffee grounds. Later on, fellow Italian, Achille Gaggia, invented a piston-powered spring that activated the machine's lever, which lead to the production of the hydraulically powered piston espresso machine in the late 1950s. By the early 1960s, the modern espresso machine was born with such innovations as heated water and brewing pressure delivered by a pump.
The creation of automatic push-button espresso machines in the 1980s and 1990s made espresso brewing effortless and the results predictably good. But while the science of brewing espresso is easily explained, coffee lovers know that the magnificence of the perfect brew is beyond explanation.
