The History of Coffee Machine

Development history of coffee machine

At the beginning of the 20th century, an "impatient engineer" living near Napoli, Italy, was impatient with dripping coffee for too long, so he came up with a way to make coffee in a high-temperature, high-pressure way to shorten the time, so he invented the world's unique Italian coffee for quick cooking, and Espresso became popular.

After that, we saw the above passage in many books and in the essence of BBS, which is regarded as the origin of Italian coffee (Espresso). The "impatient engineer of the early 20th century" described in the above paragraph means probably Luigi Bezzera. I don't know if Bezzera is impatient, but he made a coffee machine under steam pressure in 1901, not only because he was "impatient with dripping coffee for too long", but more importantly, he knew that too slow brewing time would directly affect the quality of coffee. ──, because the brewing time is too long, the coffee powder should not be ground too fine. Rough grinding means that fewer aromatic components can be extracted than fine powder. Fast is only the superficial reason, the pursuit of quality is the driving force of Espresso development!

Moreover, I can't agree that Bezzera alone 'invented' Espresso, although he was the first to try to make a commercial coffee machine under steam pressure and created the Espresso culture that is currently made in the bar and injects coffee directly into the guest cup. However, the coffee brewed by this kind of coffee machine still does not have the delicious taste of Espresso and is full of Crema. This is mainly because Bezzera's coffee machine uses the steam produced when the water boils, which forms pressure in an airtight boiler and pushes hot water into the coffee powder in the shower head. In order to make steam, the whole boiler must be heated to boiling, causing hot water near the boiling point to burn the coffee powder, lose the aromatic oil hidden in the coffee powder, and extract the doubly bitter coffee. There are two main reasons why coffee brewed on Bezzera's machine cannot form Crema:

The hot water for brewing coffee is too hot, resulting in the loss of oil.

The steam boiler cannot provide enough pressure.

Even so, exerting extra pressure to shorten the time it takes to brew coffee is still worth the effort. Just don't use steam, what should be used as a source of pressure? The further question is: how much pressure does it take to get the best extraction rate?