"espresso" news and stories

Plenty of places consider themselves coffee-centric, but few with the passion, conviction and seemingly quirky drinks of Australia. (Of course, they may just seem quirky because we're so busy with our Caramel Macchiatos.) The coffee culture of Australia and neighboring New Zealand, driven by waves of Italian immigrants that have historically settled in the region, are widely considered light-years ahead of the relatively fledgling one in the States, but what makes them so different from us?

Find out how we differ from our friends Down Under after the jump.

We've come to the last of the "four Ms" needed to make everybody's favorite concentrated coffee kicker. And the last "M" is the romantic part, the human touch -- la mano, or the hand of the barista. Of course, as a professional barista trainer, I am inclined to think that this last "M" is the most important in the scheme of espresso-making. Call me biased, but seriously, you think this stuff is going to make itself?

The barista's role is perhaps more nuanced and significant even than it seems at first blush. For one thing, there's a good reason we're lumped in with all the fine-tuned mechanical details of the equipment and the blend: The barista is to be part artist, part machine. Just as la macchina is designed to the same thing every time you turn it on, so too should the barista be as consistent as possible. He or she should understand the "how" and "why" behind every step in the process -- from grinding to extracting to drinking.

A good barista can make delicious coffee; a great barista can explain how it came to be that way.

Two down and two to go in our exploration of the Italian tradition of the "four Ms" of making espresso coffee. The third part of our list also happens to be my favorite: la miscela, or the espresso blend.

The word "espresso," contrary to relatively common belief, has almost nothing at all to do with the beans themselves, but rather the magically delicious elixir they produce when put through the process. You can actually toss any beans into il molino and extract them using la macchina and what you'll have is, by most definitions, espresso.

But that doesn't mean it's going to taste very good. Find out why after the jump.

Last week, you may recall, we started tackling the old Italian concept of the "four Ms" necessary to make espresso, with an introduction to la macchina. It's only fitting, then, that today we cozy up with la macchina's best buddy: il molino or la machinadosatore, the espresso grinder.

To put it in terms of that Neil Simon classic, "The Odd Couple," your grinder is to your espresso machine as Felix is to Oscar: It's precise, acute and fickle, while la macchina's less prone to acting than reacting.

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.