Italian espresso-style coffee is a cultural phenomenon thathas spread across the world and has spurred a specialty coffee revolution whichaccounts for a significant portion of the more than $80 billion that is spentannually on coffee of all forms. Nearly 120 million 60 kg (about 132 1b) bagsof coffee are produced annually making coffee the second most important legal globalcommodity behind oil. Coffeehouses are public places of intellectual, artistic,and social significance that have origins in the early sixteenth century on theArabian Peninsula and are frequently cited as the birthplace of such majorrevolutions as the American and the French.
Espresso is particularly suited to the social quality of thecoffeehouse because of the expense of the technology as well as the skillrequired to properly prepare it and the on-demand character of its preparation.The resulting deep and flavorful brew and the array of beverages made withit—from traditional Italian macchiattos and cappuccinos to American-styleflavored lattes, mochas, and blended coffee beverages—have rapidly spreadin popularity across the world (Davids 2001). Even coffee-producing countriesare catching on to the phenomenon and keeping for themselves some of the betterquality coffee, beans traditionally reserved solely for export. Nearly aquarter of all coffee produced is now consumed in the countries where it isgrown (Pendergrast 1999). Today, espresso-style coffee retains a history asrich, deep, and bittersweet as its flavor.
Origin of Coffee
Espresso-style coffee is one of numerous methods for brewingthe roasted and ground seed of the coffee tree, but espresso is unique for itsdependence on modern technological advances. The sophisticated machinery oftoday can be seen as a culmination of one strand of coffees diverse history, rootedin the drive for intensely concentrated, full-bodied, but filtered coffee (amajor distinction of espresso from Turkish-style coffee). It is only onecultural definition of many traditions that have emerged in the broad historyof coffee that reaches back some fifteen centuries when, as legend has it, anEthiopian goatherd named Kaldi discovered his goats overly excited as a resultof eating a mysterious fruit off an unfamiliar tree. He finally worked up thecourage to try the coffee cherry and quickly felt the unusual sense ofexcitement, inspiration, and clarity that came from it…and that continues tobe sought after today. The early use of the Ethiopian coffee tree (binomialname Coffea arabica) was, however,little more than a tea-like beverage steeped from a macerated concoction of thecherry, seed, and leaves–a far cry from the smoky and bittersweet deeplycolored brew of today’s espresso shot. And yet geographical influences areintegral to the understanding of the science of espresso because of therelationship between the coffee seed and its surrounding environment. From itsorigin in Ethiopia and its earliest cultivation on the Arabian Peninsula,coffee has been smuggled, traded, and extensively cultivated across the world(Pendergrast 1999).
Global Cultivation and Nineteenth Century Europe
Pressed Out Coffee On-Demand: The Technology of Espresso
The earliest brewers that attempted to use pressure toextract coffee appeared on the scene in the nineteenth century and suchtechnology is the origin for the name espresso: to be pressed out and made expressly for the consumer on demand.The most direct predecessor to the modern commercial espresso machine appeared aroundthe turn of the century to meet the demand for an instant brew (Pendergrast1999). Luigi Bezzera patented a machine that met that demand and beganproducing the first dark, rich, complex, concentrated, satiny espresso shotswith a rich hazel-colored crema on top and an overwhelming aroma (Pendergrast1999). The language of espresso was born and, in particular, the innovationsthat followed were built in the pursuit of perfect crema, the sweet and foamylighter-colored layer with a tiger-skin effect that is characteristic ofquality espresso (Illy and Viani).
Prized espresso brewing occurs at the molecular levelthrough a series of intricate chemical reactions involving the volatile organiccompounds present within the coffee bean. For this reason, technology is vitalto espresso, though various gadgets have long been implemented in the brewingof coffee of all forms. Steam pressure was the first innovation in pushingwater through the compact ground coffee, but any attempts to apply additionalpressure from steam damaged the espresso by cooking or burning it, so steam-poweredmachines proved insufficient to the task.
Soon after World War II, inventor Achille Gaggia in Italydeveloped spring-powered machines that used a manually operated lever to pushhot water through the coffee by expansion of a spring above a piston positionedover the portafilter at the brewing group head. The filter and brew headmechanisms developed in the early twentieth century remain largely intact onmodern semi-automatic espresso machines. Gaggias machine used pressure six tonine times greater than that of the steam-powered predecessors and produced a fuller-bodiedshot with an exquisite layer of sweet crema. Hydraulics and electronic pumpseventually replaced the screw-and-piston, and further refinements includingelectronic instrumentation allowed for higher quality and greater consistency(Davids 2001).
In addition to some fundamental mechanical and design elements,what has also remained relatively intact is the interaction between machine andbartender, or the now omnipresent barista,in Italian. Even on semi-automatic espresso machines, the barista grinds freshcoffee into the portafilter and then applies manual pressure called a tamp intothe bed of the portafilter to make a cake. The baristas efforts combine withthe work of the machine which forces the water through the coffee. This sequenceis a large part of the romance of the artesian coffeehouse. Even machines withautomatic brewing mechanisms require manual steaming of milk for the vast arrayof beverages now made out of espresso coffee. However, espresso purists arguethat the fully automatic espresso machines available today that use advancedtechnology in the attempt to perform the same tasks come nowhere close tosucceeding.
Blending and Roasting: The Art of Espresso
The spread of coffee across the world is significant forperfecting the espresso shot because the scant ounce or so of liquid is treatedby master roasters as a fine art. Once brewed, the perfect, artisticallycrafted blend can embody for professional coffee tasters global coffeeexcellence. Distinct regional attributes affect the taste of the carefullygrown and processed coffee cherry in the same manner as wine. Consequently,coffee experts refer to the terroir of aregion, a French word signifying the summation of those attributes whichdirectly affect the final product. The unroasted green coffee seed is initiallyaffected most directly by climate, soil, and terrain, among other factors,though methods of growing, harvesting, and processing can further alter theresult in the cup.
A combination of heavy-bodied coffees from an Indonesianisland such as Sumatra with bright, sparkling coffees from Latin America alongwith exotically aromatic coffees from East African countries or those from theArabian Peninsula with floral and fruity flavor notes is a likely combinationfor many proprietary blends. Since worldwide coffee cultivation has existed aslong as espresso technology, it is safe to assume that experts have long been blendingand roasting multiple-origin coffees according to their taste. Italian roastersare not opposed to using a small amount of high quality Coffea canephora, or robusta, in their espresso blends for its heavy body, but the species istypically much less desired and fetches a much lower price worldwide.
Finally, espresso beverages in Italian-American cuisine, andthe Seattle coffee cuisine they inspired, have direct Italian ancestry andspecific parameters for the ideal shot of espresso, with slight variationsdepending on the business, the barista, and the coffee itself (Davids 2001).Those parameters make up the basic structure of a thoroughly analyzed organicproduct—a product that at its best contains hundreds of individual flavorcompounds, and even more than wine. For that ounce of espresso comprising a single shot, seven to nine grams of finely ground coffee is used. Frequently, machines are designed to pull two shots, which use up to eighteen grams of ground coffee. Filtered water heated to 195-205 degrees Fahrenheit is pressed through the carefully tamped powder at very high pressure in the range of twenty to thirty seconds for two shots of brewed espresso.
Because of the combined nature of the technology used, espressoand only espresso can be defined as a small cup of concentrated brew preparedon request by extraction of ground roasted coffee beans, with hot water underpressure for a defined short time (Illy and Viani 2005). Espresso machinespush the water with high pressure through the compact bed of ground coffeeand the rapidly brewed or percolated coffee is forced through a metal filterresulting in a complex and volatile liquid that is meant to be consumed immediatelybecause it quickly breaks down in quality. Pressure and brew time arequintessential terms describing espresso. For espresso, the last century of technologyhas been developed in pursuit of achieving a perfect harmony of both in orderto extract from the ideally blended, roasted, and ground coffee what the connoisseurof espresso defines as the perfect shot (Illy and Viani 2005).
With coffeehouses based on the Italian espresso modelflourishing in America and across the world, the modern history of coffee willcontinue to be written. And though in the American experience the originalItalian espresso is often obscured among a myriad of flavor and milk combinations, the essential component isavailable and, at quality coffeehouses everywhere, can be easily ordered in allits unadulterated purity.
– Posted February 6, 2008
References
Davids, Kenneth. 2001. Espresso: Ultimate Coffee. New York: St. Martins Griffin.
Illy, Andrea and Rinantonio Viani, eds. 2005. Espresso Coffee: The Science of Quality. Amsterdam: Elsevier Academic Press.
Pendergrast, Mark. 1999. Uncommon Grounds: The History of Coffee and How It Transformed Our World. New York: Basic Books.
A History of Espresso
Oops, That wasn’t found