The Espresso Connection

It all started when my department store espresso machine finally gave up the ghost a couple of months ago. To tell the truth, though our relationship was of long standing, it had not been particularly happy--at least from my point of view--for the last few years. I had outgrown her. The parting was tough, but it was time to move on.

Like almost everyone these days, when faced with an important life decision, I immediately fired up my computer and visited Google. Thus began my trip down Alice’s rabbit hole into the unholy conjunction of cyberspace and caffeine, a virtual world fraught with passion, obsession and performance anxiety.

It’s a land where I learned about 25-second pulls, custom-made titanium tampers and the intricacies of back-flushing. It’s a land where I quickly acquired a $400 espresso machine and a $10-a-week bean habit. And it’s a land where most of the inhabitants will scoff at such paltry amounts.

My first clue that I was stumbling into deep water came when I typed “espresso” in the search engine and hit return. More than 1.1 million sites. Refining it to “espresso machine” narrowed it to 100,000. And “home espresso machine” resulted in 68,000. Obviously, this is a topic that many people on the Internet feel very strongly about.

Among the places I found were commercial sites for both manufacturers and sellers, as well as vendors of everything from coffee beans to grinders to tampers--the little stamp you use to compress the ground coffee into a tight disc. The amount of equipment you can buy to outfit a home espresso bar is astonishing.

The two most popular seem to be those belonging to 1st-Line Equipment and Whole Latte Love. Both are small companies with excellent reputations for equipment, service and support. Which to choose seems to be mainly a matter of taste; they carry essentially identical lines at essentially identical prices. (I ended up going with Whole Latte Love because I liked the name.)

These are not the places to buy your run-of-the-mill coffee maker. This is the land of Gaggia, Rancilio, Saeco and Pavoni, the Italian sports cars of the coffee world. The difference between these machines and a Mr. Coffee is the difference between an audiophile stereo system and a portable cassette player. At their best, these machines yield coffee with rich, creamy texture and unbelievably focused and detailed flavor. The critical crema--the layer of emulsified oil and water that floats to the top of a good cup--is at least 1/4 inch thick and cocoa brown, not white.

These machines are also every bit as temperamental as your old Alfa. Forget about pushing a button and coffee coming out. This is coffee-making as ritual.

First you have to preheat the machine, starting it up about a half-hour before you’re ready to use it. Turn on the steam valve to clear any water left over. Run hot water through the machine to warm the filter basket and the cups. Grind the coffee to just the right fineness, then dispense it into the filter basket. Tamp it just right (between 20 and 30 pounds per square inch is deemed perfect--people practice on a bathroom scale to get it exact). Fit the filter basket into the machine and now you’re ready to push the button.

Afterward, dispense with the “puck” (and pray that it’s dry and tight, not sloppy) and run some water through the filter head to get rid of any loose grind. Every couple of weeks you need to do a thorough cleaning, breaking the machine down and soaking the various parts in a special solvent to get rid of any oily buildup.

Obviously, these are not machines for the masses but for the hardy few, the caffeinated lunatic fringe. Not surprisingly, then, there are also a good number of espresso fan sites--noncommercial Web sites built by people motivated simply by the love of caffeine. Many of these are quite technically sophisticated, as good as or better than many a commercial site.

One of my favorites is Randy Glass’ “Espresso! My Espresso!” page, which he calls an “ongoing Internet novelette.” Currently 56 chapters, it begins with his apparently spontaneous decision to explore the world of espresso. As novelettes frequently do, it has its roots in childhood trauma--not being allowed to share Mom and Dad’s morning brew (paging Dr. Freud, stat!).

After 17 chapters of research and pondering, the machine eventually arrives--well, the machines. It seems our previously decaffeinated hero has become sufficiently consumed to order not just an espresso machine but also a grinder and--the thing that separates the men from the boys--a home roaster. The story goes on from there.

One of the best things on this site is a close-up video of an espresso shot being pulled from his new machine. As with the novelette, it’s not the plot that appeals so much as the technique. Lacking a digital video camera, Glass assembled this moving picture by splicing together still images--roughly one frame for every 1/4 second of the 23-second pull. It is set up on a loop so it repeats indefinitely. In cyberspace, the espresso never stops.

Another of my favorite sites is run by David Schomer, owner of Seattle’s Espresso Vivace coffee bars. Schomer, who wears a certain wired/quizzical terrier look in the picture on the site, is the philosopher king of espresso, and his tips are intended mainly for professionals.

His analysis of the factors of a perfect espresso starts with the environmental (temperature, direct sunlight and humidity). The perfect espresso, he believes, can only be brewed at precisely 203 degrees (measured, he recommends, with a “Fluke 51 K/J readout fitted with an iron-constant low mass bead probe”).

The degree of specificity in an espresso discussion is not to be underestimated. For proof, visit the newsgroup alt.coffee, which truly is where the wild things are.

A newsgroup is a place where people who share an interest in a topic can meet to discuss their opinions and concerns. Alt.coffee is evenly split between the two. You can state your position on the issue of whether a convex 58-millimeter tamper is inherently superior to the flat one in combination with a La Marzocco double filter basket and, if so, whether it is really worth it to go for the hand-carved Reg Barber special ($40 and up).

On the other hand, if you’re troubled by “short pulls” (espresso shots that take less than the ideal 25 seconds ... apparently an affliction that affects millions), alt.coffee is the place to go to find a sympathetic ear. Even though passions do run high on this board, it is a remarkably friendly and helpful place (especially compared with boards discussing, say, operating system software).

People will write in about various espresso-related experiences. One poster confided that when he visited Seattle, he phoned ahead to ask when he could have Schomer personally pull him an espresso. Another was titled “Trip to Montana Yielded Great Espresso Shot.” These are people who plan vacations around a cup of coffee.

They’ll also share tips and tinkers: A common one is how to install a digital thermostat in your coffee machine to hit that perfect 203-degree temperature.

When I was troubled by an espresso-related problem (yes, for a brief time I suffered from short-pull syndrome; all better now), the group not only diagnosed it for me (worn grinder blades) but told me where to buy replacements and walked me through the procedure of installing them--and I’m a guy whose idea of an advanced handyman project is hanging a picture.

In fact, from visiting the newsgroup almost daily for several months (like a good cappuccino, it quickly becomes a morning ritual), what I find most amazing is how patiently the same core group of experts deals with what seems like an endless repetition of the same dozen or so questions.

And that occasionally includes the ultimate Internet conversation killer: “After spending $1,000 on a machine, $250 on a grinder and $20 a pound on beans, how come I still get better espresso at the stand at the Rome airport?”

Russ Parsons makes his morning latte on a Rancilio Silvia machine and a rebuilt Gaggia MDF grinder, using Malabar Gold beans from Josuma Coffee Co.

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For Brewers and Browsers

1st-Line Equipment: www.1st-line.com

Whole Latte Love: www.wholelattelove.com

Espresso! My Espresso!:

www.quiknet.com/~frcn/Coffee/Coffee.html

David Schomer’s Table at Lucidcafe:

www2.lucidcafe.com/lucidcafe/cafeforum/schomer1.html

Alt.coffee can be best accessed through

Google newsgroups

Josuma Coffee Co.: (650) 366-5453