subject: Pump Espresso Machine - An Introduction Into Coffee Machines [print this page] Ok, this is a short article about my new interest in the area of a pump espresso machine. Well at least I thought it was when I started researching coffee machines I thought that was what I wanted, but when for some reason I started doing a bit more research (which is most unlike me - I almost just popped into the local supermarket and bought the first coffee maker I saw in a sale). But for one reason or another this never happened so then I got back home, did some research on the internet and started to discover a whole world of things I had never even considered in the world that is coffee making machines.
Well I must admit at home, I drink Nescafe Gold Blend (the only thing I do to make it taste better in my opinion is to add the milk first!). So here I am at the start of a journey into buying a coffee machine and where can I go - instant coffee, presumably there is only one way??
Well there are soooooo many choices when it comes to espresso makers. There are manual ones, steam ones, semi automatic coffee makers, automatic espresso makers and of course the super automatic (don't get me started on the semantics of those descriptions).
In essence, it depends on how lazy you are, how much control you would like over the quality of your drink, how much money you have to spend on these things and how many espressos you are going to drink in a day.
Well all those things considered, here is a quick over view of the different types.
It all comes down to the brewing procedure.
You need coffee beans, water and some heat - those are you main ingredients and with those, anyone can make coffee (of variable quality!).
First you grind the beans (and there is a whole can of worms - the world of grinding seems just as big as the world of coffee machines, but that is a different story). You grind them to a particular level - then you tamp them (press them down a bit) - again a whole range of different methods and results here. Then you have to heat the water up to a certain temperature and then get the water through the grinds - this takes pressure.
It is the pressure, volume, speed and temperature of this movement of water through the grinds (of varying courseness) that gives an espresso its taste - a huge number of variables as you can see.
The manual machines, you do everything - including generating the pressure by hand, usually on a lever.
The steam ones do the pressure bit, but not too well (for the coffee aficionados) - there is little pressure and the water gets too hot and scolds the grinds so it probably doesn't taste any better than the Nescafe.
Then the semi automatic - you do the grinding and the tamping and it builds up a nice pressure, you control the flow and volume of the water going through the grinds.
Then the automatic espresso machine. This does everything that the semi automatic machine does, but with the added benefit of controlling the flow and speed of the water too.
Finally we have the super automatic espresso machine which does everything apart from drink the espresso for you.
There are pros and cons to each as I'm sure you can imagine, but that is for another article!
