"la macchina" news and stories

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.