Espresso machines are used to make everyone’s favorite concentrated coffee beverage. Due to the nature of espresso, the needed hardware is different from the type found in other kinds of coffee machines. Espresso coffee, or caffè espresso, is brewed by forcing pressurized hot water through fine grains, resulting in the thicker consistency and foam so beloved all around the world. Thus special machines solely designed to brew espresso are essential.
The first such unit was patented in Milan at the turn of the Twentieth Century, utilizing steam pressure, though today’s market offers pump action models too. Home espresso machines were only developed in the 1970s, however, and they were expensive, large, and required some skill to operate. In fact, an honorific of a job title even exists for expert operators of an espresso machine, who are known as baristas, the Italian word for a bartender! But technological advances have now made home-brewing a much easier matter, further adding to the wild popularity of espresso.
Espresso is not a specific bean or roast (level), but a method of making coffee. Thus, a wide selection of espresso coffees exist as the result of any number of different combinations of roasts and beans. In Italy, where this way of making coffee first began, darker roasts are preferred in the south while lighters ones are more common in the country’s northern areas.
Espresso can be served over gelato, a kind of ice cream, with vanilla being the traditional flavor, though any will do; this is called affogato, or “drowned” in Italian. Bombón, or “confection” in Spanish, means serving espresso with condensed milk. Serve it corretto, Italian for “correct” (colloquially the word means “spiked”), and you offer it with a shot of brandy or some other liquor. Then of course there is espresso mocha, blended with chocolate – not to be confused with the coffee blend of the same name.
