Coffee Technology & Coffee Machines
Many developments have serving this delicious coffee cup.
The Coffee Plunger
Elizabeth Dakin who married a London-based tea and coffee merchant in 1841, thought that the iron used in traditional roasters “imparted noxious qualities” on the delicate flavours of the coffee, and so developed a coffee roaster made of gold, silver or platinum. Once roasted and ground the coffee is ready for brewing. The simplest method in the 19th century was to pour hot water into a pot with coffee grinds. The problem was separating the coffee grinds from the liquid coffee.
Elizabeth Dakin took a standard coffeepot and put a perforated cylinder - similar to a sieve - in the middle, into which she put a plunger on a screw thread. The plunger moved up or down inside the cylinder when the handle at the top was turned.
The coffee was placed in the cylinder and the hot water poured in. After a few minutes the screw was turned, moving the disc down, forcing water through the coffee to complete the brewing process and forcing the grounds to the bottom of the pot, so they could brew no longer. This arrangement not only kept the grinds out of the cup but also enhanced the flavour. While the screw thread mechanism has since been simplified into a simple rod, the concept remains the same today as the one Elizabeth pioneered.
History tells us other Africans of the same era fueled up on protein-rich coffee-and-animal-fat balls—primitive PowerBars—and unwound with wine made from coffee-berry pulp. Coffee later crossed the Red Sea to Arabia, where things really got cooking... Arabia made export beans infertile by parching or boiling, and it is said that no coffee seed sprouted outside Africa or Arabia until the 1600s—until Baba Budan. As tradition has it, this Indian pilgrim-cum-smuggler left Mecca with fertile seeds strapped to his belly. Baba’s beans bore fruit and initiated an agricultural expansion that would soon reach Europe’s colonies.
Espresso Machines
In 1822, the first espresso machine was made in France. In 1933, Dr. Ernest Illy invented the first automatic espresso machine. However, the modern-day espresso machine was created by Italian Achilles Gaggia in 1946. Gaggia invented a high pressure espresso machine by using a spring powered lever system. The first pump driven espresso machine was produced in 1960 by the Faema company.
Melitta Bentz.
Melitta Bentz was a housewife from Dresden, Germany, who invented the first coffee filter. She was looking for a way to brew the perfect cup of coffee with none of the bitterness caused by overbrewing. Melitta Bentz decided to invent a way to make a filtered coffee, pouring boiling water over ground coffee and having the liquid be filtered, removing any grinds. Melitta Bentz experimented with different materials, until she found that her son's blotter paper used for school worked best. She cut a round piece of blotting paper and put it in a metal cup.
On June 20th, 1908, the coffee filter and filter paper were patented. On December 15th, 1908, Melitta Bentz and her husband Hugo started the Melitta Bentz Company. The next year they sold 1200 coffee filters at the Leipziger fair in Germany. The Mellitta Bentz Company also patented the filter bag in 1937 and vacuumpacking in 1962.
