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Can a hand-pressed coffee machine extract espresso without electricity? What's the difference between a hand press and an Italian coffee maker?

Published: 2026-06-26 Author:

Last Updated: 2026/06/26, During the Spring Festival, Qianjie did a thorough cleaning of the stores! As a result, a dusty hand-pressed coffee machine was found in a corner full of sundries. So, today's Qianjie to test whether the hand-pressed coffee machine can extract espresso as delicious as the espresso machine. In fact, as early as 1947, rice

During the Spring Festival, Qianjie did a thorough cleaning of the stores! As a result, a dusty hand-pressed coffee machine was found in a corner full of sundries. So, today's Qianjie to test whether the hand-pressed coffee machine can extract espresso as delicious as the espresso machine.

In fact, as early as 1947, the piston pull rod coffee machine invented by Milan barista adopted the design of hand pressure extraction. Using a manual lever to extract the coffee at a pressure up to 9bar, the concentrate not only has a rich golden foam, but also has a very short extraction time. Although this is not the first birth of the coffee machine, it is the epoch-making ink of the coffee machine. With the progress of the times, the intelligence of the machine gradually replaced the artificial hand pressure, so the hand pressure began to fade out of people's field of vision (a small number of coffee machines still use lever hand pressure)! However, the retro trend has led people to bring a series of old-era designs back to the table, so in the year when camping was popular, convenient, electricity-free hand-pressed coffee machines attracted a lot of people.

This machine is the third generation of star grain hand-pressing products, which was purchased in Qianjie in 21 years. It is mainly composed of machine body and folding bracket! By disassembling the body of the hand press, you can get several parts with different functions: an upper cover with a pressure pump, a water tank for storing hot water, a lower cover for placing coffee powder and acting as a liquid outlet, and a coffee cup. (the one in the lower right corner, the front street always thought he was the lower lid, but later found that this was a cup for coffee.)

According to the official description, it can be filled with 18,22g coffee powder and can be extracted by pouring it into 120~180ml 's hot water. A pressure regulating valve is installed on the lower cover, which can be freely adjusted in the pressure range of the 15~20bar.

These are probably the functions, so let's move on to the experiment to see if it can really extract espresso as delicious as a coffee maker.

Cooking experiment extraction parameters are as follows: the use of coffee beans for the warm sun blend, the flavor performance of whisky, berries, butter cookies; grinding for Italian grinding, is directly used to grind the flour size; the amount of flour is 20g; hot water temperature is 94 °C, 120ml, powder-liquid ratio is 1:2, that is, the need to extract 40ml coffee liquid. First of all, we fill the powder bowl with 20 grams of ground coffee powder.

Then flatten it and press it flat, then screw the powder bowl to the water tank, be sure to tighten it tightly.

Then pour hot water into 120ml94 °C, finally screw on the lid, and the extraction preparation is complete!

Next, enter the extraction stage and press evenly several times in a row until the amount of coffee from the target can be stopped!

After pressing continuously for about 20 seconds, the coffee liquid begins to drip out, and it is accompanied by a considerable amount of fat.

When the coffee liquid reaches the target liquid weight, it can be stopped!

The taste of direct drinking is actually quite good! Not only is it not as light and thin as imagined, but it also belongs to a rich type, and the alcohol thickness is also relatively thick, which is very close to the espresso extracted by Italian machine. Then make a cup of milk coffee to try its grease smoothness. The proportion is still the same as that of the regular latte, and the 40ml coffee liquid is paired with 200ml's hot milk.

The grease does not decompose and agglomerate quickly, which makes it very smooth to pull up the flowers, so generally speaking, the grease is qualified!

After a day of use, the hand-pressed coffee machine does give a lot of delight, not only can extract rich oil, but also the taste of coffee is not bad! The key is that it is very playable, convenient, easy to extract, no electricity, beans can be switched at will (this is really not an advertisement), and the stability of coffee extraction mainly depends on the level of parameters and operation. But the key is the degree of grinding of coffee beans, if you want to extract rich oil, then Italian grinding is essential. Of course, the finest grinding of the hand grinder is also possible, but the taste of the extracted coffee will not be too close to concentration and the oil will not be too full! All right, after the summary, you can think about what kind of coffee can be extracted from this hand-pressed coffee machine.

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Front Street Cafe

No. 10 Baoqian street, Yandun road, Dongshankou, Yuexiu district, Guangzhou, Guangdong province

FrontStreet Coffee is a long-established specialty coffee roaster in Guangzhou China, selling freshly roasted beans from its own farm in Yunnan as well as dozens of carefully selected single-origin beans from around the world for both pour-over and espresso. The products deliver consistently excellent quality and great value, with shipping within 24 hours. Guangzhou’s FrontStreet Coffee shop is recommended by many coffee lovers, and the beans are now available online at the Tmall 。