The evolution of coffee making methods

The literal meaning of coffee can be understood as many kinds: coffee drinks, coffee beans, coffee trees and so on. Generally speaking, the first thing people associate with the word coffee is coffee drinks. So let's first understand coffee as a drink and look at some knowledge about this drink.

Coffee, tea and cola are called the three major drinks in the world today. From the discovery of the first coffee tree in Ethiopia to the monopoly of coffee in the ancient Yemeni kingdom, to the spread of coffee by the European colonial empire and the spread and further development of coffee culture by modern European civilization, until now, with the acceleration of the rhythm of people in the high-tech society and the improvement of the requirements for the taste and quality of coffee, coffee as a beverage, its production and drinking methods have also undergone several changes.

At first, when the Ethiopians found coffee, they boiled the coffee fruit in a pot and drank it. Arabs discovered that coffee beans were roasted and drunk around the tenth century. Nowadays, primitive brewed coffee is widely used in the Arab world and some underdeveloped areas such as Africa and South America. One of the more typical is the Ethiopian family-style Coffee time and the Turkish Ibric pot brewing. Coffee trees are planted in almost every household in Ethiopia, and many of them are grown in the courtyard, so coffee is equivalent to a basic beverage, but this primitive and simple country also maintains its own style in making and drinking coffee. In the most primitive way, they fried the coffee beans in a flat pan, mashed them in a mollusk, and boiled them in a large-eared, long-necked pot until the water was full of fragrance. Pour it into a cup the size of a teacup placed in a small square wooden box in advance, and then give it to the people around you according to the order of generations. This way is also a ceremony to entertain guests in Ethiopia itself.

Ethiopian long neck coffee maker

In Turkey, locals use a long copper pan called Ibric to boil ground coffee powder as fine as flour, then precipitate the coffee grounds and drink it, sometimes with spices such as cardamom and cinnamon.

Turkish coffee maker (Ibric)

Coffee was introduced into Europe in the 17 th century. Like coffee but can't stand the feeling that Turkish coffee leaves a mouth full of coffee grounds every time you drink it, so there is a follicular way. The follicle originally uses a filter called "flannel" (flannel), which puts the coffee powder into a flannel cloth and pours boiling water into the pot so that the coffee liquid is filtered out and the coffee powder can be separated, so that the coffee tastes less bitter and softer than Turkish coffee. Later, because the velvet cloth was troublesome in cleaning, filter paper filtration appeared later. In the 20th century, the development of filter coffee was updated in Japan. The Japanese deeply studied the culture of filter coffee, such as the "tea ceremony", and a series of more diversified tools and techniques such as Kalita,Kono,Hario appeared. Later, there were French filter pots, siphon pots using vacuum principles, and Belgian pots improved by Belgian craftsmen according to siphon pots in order to adapt to the European aristocracy's pursuit of exterior design, which have been used by people until now. it also has its own characteristics when making coffee.

Siphon kettle

Belgian kettle

At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, with the acceleration of the pace of life and the increase of passenger flow in cafes, the speed of coffee brewing became higher and higher, and the above methods could not meet the needs of people, so the Espresso machine based on the principle of atmospheric pressure was born at the beginning of the 20th century, and an unprecedented espresso Espresso with very high concentration and little strong taste was born.

Classic Italian coffee maker (La Pavoni)

Commercial semi-automatic coffee machine

It takes less than 30 seconds for Espresso machine to extract a cup of coffee, and the mechanized operation makes it easy for general cafes to master coffee technology. The advent of Espresso machine has played a great role in the development of modern cafes. Nowadays, large coffee chains in the world, such as Starbucks, Coasta and so on, use Espresso machines for rapid operations. But Starbucks is no longer pure espresso but American-style espresso. Its selling point is not the small cup of Espresso, but the fancy coffee mixed with milk, cream, caramel, chocolate and so on. Because the cost of the Espresso machine is relatively high, it is generally used only as a coffee shop, and people invent the mocha pot in order to enjoy such fast and convenient coffee at home. The pressure of the mocha kettle is much smaller, with only two atmospheres. It was born in the 1930s and gets its name from the famous port of Mocha in Yemen.

Mocha pot

With the development of society, technological progress and the continuous acceleration of the pace of people's life, Espresso machines are also constantly developing towards more precision and automation. Now it has been achieved by grinding beans and pressing powder extraction to foam, even people without any technology can make their own cappuccinos and lattes at home.

On the already controversial issue of caffeine, the ice drop coffee machine invented by the Dutch made up for this deficiency. It uses ice water to extract coffee, because caffeine can be dissolved on a large scale at a temperature above 80 degrees Celsius, so the most important feature of coffee made by this method is that there is so little caffeine that it is almost negligible. But it takes him about 10 hours to make each time.

The various production methods mentioned above have their own characteristics and flavor, and understanding these methods will enable us to better understand and taste coffee.