Espresso is undeniably part of the now widely popular Italian-style coffee culture.

Over the last decades, many have come to consider espresso to be the best way to drink coffee, and it is now the most popular coffee drink consumed at home.

In 1884, Angelo Moriondo of Turin patented a steam-driven "instantaneous" coffee-making device. The device is "almost certainly” the first Italian bar machine that controlled the supply of steam and water separately through the coffee.

Seventeen years later, in 1901, Luigi Bezzera of Milan devised and patented several improvements to the espresso machine. The improvements had a significant impact on how the machine worked; for this reason, Luigi Bezzera is widely considered the inventor of the first espresso machine.

In Italy, the rise of espresso consumption was associated with urbanization and an increase in espresso “bars” (the word used in Italy to identify a coffee shop) that provided a place for socialization.

The famous “standing at the bar” culture was first introduced in a coffee shop named “Caffè Manaresi,” which opened in Florence on October 6th, 1898.

The curious story about this café starts with its location. It was located close to a small factory and was mostly frequented by factory workers during their breaks. Due to limited space in the café and the short duration of the factory workers’ breaks, the owner of “Caffè Manaresi” had a revolutionary idea: they would only serve coffee at the counter in order to make sure patrons were not late returning to work.

At the time, coffee bars were places where people would meet to discuss politics and business, often for a few hours at the time. The more the way of living sped up, the more this new “stand at the bar” culture was embraced in Italy.

In the English-speaking world, espresso became popular, particularly in its cappuccino form, owing to the tradition of drinking coffee with milk and the exotic appeal of the foam. In the United States, this was more often in the form of “lattes”, with or without added flavored syrups. The latte is claimed to have been invented in the 1950s by Italian American Lino Meiorin of Caffe Mediterraneum in Berkeley, California, as a “long cappuccino.”

For most coffee drinkers, one of the key features of the espresso is not just the strength of the cup, but also the Crema.

Crema is the Italian word for creme, and it describes the natural head of foam that forms on top of the coffee.

This happens because, under very high pressure, water is able to dissolve more carbon dioxide, the gas that is produced during the coffee roasting process. When the brewed liquid returns to normal atmospheric pressure on its way to the cup, the liquid can no longer hold all of the gas, so it generates a myriad of tiny bubbles. These bubbles become trapped in the coffee and appear as a stable foam: the crema.

Great espresso is about the recipe - good coffee roasters will give you plenty of information about a number of factors in order to achieve the best results:

·       Weight of ground coffee

·       Duration of the brewing process

·       Temperature of the water used for brewing

·       Amount of liquid resulting from the process (in grams or ml)

The aim when brewing espresso is to have the machine produce a certain amount of liquid within a certain time frame.

For example, our recipe states that we want to brew 18g of coffee and produce approximately 34g of liquid in 25-27 seconds. In order to achieve this, we need to control how quickly the water flows through the ground coffee.

The speed at which the water flows through the coffee determines how much flavor is extracted. If the water passes through too slowly, the coffee will be over-extracted with a bitter and ashy taste. If the water flows too quickly, we won’t extract enough flavor from the coffee, resulting in a watery and weak taste.

The way we control the flow of the water through the coffee is by changing how easy it is for the water to pass through. We can control this with two factors: the amount of coffee used and the size of the coffee particles.

The finer we grind the coffee, the more the particles can be compressed, and the more difficult it is for the water to pass between them. The opposite is also true: the coarser we grind the coffee, the faster the water will flow through it.

Many baristas put a heavy emphasis on tamping. It is our opinion that tamping is often overestimated. The goal is simply to push the air out of the coffee and to make sure that the grounds are flat and even prior to brewing.

How hard you pack the coffee makes a relatively small difference in how quickly the water passes through it.

Using proper tamping technique tamping in order to avoid injury is more important. When you apply pressure to the coffee, your elbow should be directly above the center of the tamper and your wrist should be straight.

Now, we arrive at the steps for making two perfect cups of espresso.

Brewing:

• Fill the reservoir in the espresso machine with filtered water with low mineral content and switch on the machine to heat the water.

• Grind the coffee just before you start brewing. Be sure to weigh the coffee first (for example, 18 grams). Grind the coffee into a small paper cup. Turn on the scale and weigh the paper cup. Next, grind the coffee into the paper cup and find the weight of just the coffee grounds.

• Make sure the basket is clean. If not, wipe it with a dry cloth and remove any leftovers. The cloth will help to remove the oily residue from the last brew as well.

• Put the coffee into the basket of the brew handle.

• Tamp the coffee flat, keeping your wrist straight, to make sure that the grounds are even.

• Weigh the cups into which you are going to brew the coffee.

• Turn on the machine to flush some water through the group head. This will help to stabilize the temperature of the machine and will rinse off any remaining coffee grounds from the previous brew.

• Carefully lock the handle into the machine and put the cups in place to receive the coffee. The coffee must flow down the sides of the cups, not directly into the center. This will allow the “crema” to fill the cup evenly.

• Get your timing device ready. If the machine doesn’t have a time display showing you how long the shot has been brewing, use a simple stopwatch on your mobile phone or a kitchen timer.

• As soon as possible, start brewing the coffee. When you start to brew, start the watch. Brew the coffee between 25-27 seconds.

• When the desired brew time is up, stop the machine. When the handle has finished dripping, return the cups to the weighing scale to find the weight of the final product.