La Macchina with the CoffeeMeister

by Erin Meister, Posted Dec 1st 2009 @ 3:00PM

Delicious espresso,
courtesy of la macchina.
Photo: Erin Meister.

Erin Meister trains baristas for North Carolina-based Counter Culture Coffee and sporadically maintains the blog Meet the Press Pot from her home in New York City. This is part of a series for the caffeine-addicted.

In the Italian tradition, espresso is impossible without the "four M's," or the elements necessary to craft the tiny, potent elixir we know and love. Over the next four weeks, the CoffeeMeister will delve into the four elements that make possible our favorite little jolt: the caffè espresso.

Of course, anybody who's ever desperately craved a latte at 3 p.m. knows that people generally work better and are more focused after a coffee. The same held true during Europe's Industrial Revolution, and before long, bosses started getting tired of watching the minutes tick by as factory workers slowly got caffeinated. That all changed in 1901, when an enterprising gentleman named Luigi Bezzera built a contraption that allowed captured steam pressure to force very hot water through very finely ground coffee, creating a kind of quick coffee concentrate meant to be slugged faster than you can say "coffee break."

And presto! La macchina was born.

A barista and his machine. Photo: Erin Meister.

Since Bezzera's invention, which was little more than a metal tank that heated water over an open flame, espresso-machine technology has come a long way. So long, in fact, that there are machines on the market now that render a barista practically disposable, as everything from grinding, tamping, extracting and dispensing is handled by the machine. But let's not speak of those. Ever.

Major innovations by the world's espresso engineers since the 1940s include introducing a pump to ramp up the machine's extraction pressure (increasing it from roughly 22 lbs. to the modern 130 lbs. that push through that finely ground coffee); lowering the average machine's brewing temperature to something closer to 200°F; and adding various stability improvements, water softening and electronic bells and whistles.

I know what you're thinking: "Why didn't I think of all that?" Yeah, me too. But thankfully we can at least enjoy the fruits of the labor of others! And what delicious fruits they are...

What's the next "M" needed to make espresso? Check in with the CoffeeMeister next week to find out.

Filed Under: Lists, Drink Recipes, Coffee
Tags: america, coffee, espresso, espresso machine, europe, la macchina