A Short History of Espresso

The term café-espress has been used since the 1880s, well before espresso machines existed. It means coffee made to order, expressly for the person ordering it. It also means coffee fresh in every sense of the word:

* Made from fresh beans roasted at most two weeks prior to use,
* Ground just before brewing,
* Brewed just before drinking.

Ideally, all cafés and restaurants would serve even their regularly brewed coffee as espresso in this larger sense—freshly ground in press pots, neopolitans, vacuum brewers or table top pourovers. The aroma of good coffee is delicate and dissipates in a matter of minutes after grinding, whether it is brewed or not.

People are in a hurry. For many workers, waiting five minutes for coffee to brew is too long. They were also in a hurry 100 years ago when inventors started looking for faster ways to brew coffee to order. It being the age of steam, the first attempts used steam rather than water. A steam brewing contraption at the 1896 World's Fair is said to have made 3000 cups per hour. Unfortunately, steam-brewed coffee tastes awful since coffee generally needs to brew at just below boiling (195-205°F or 90-96°C) to taste its best. In 1901, the Italian inventor Luigi Bezzera came up with a workable solution. Pavoni manufactured these first espresso machines in 1905.

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