Saturday, November 5, 2022

BH Unlimited Update - Nov 5th 2022

Who Really Invented the First Espresso Machine?

BH Unlimited Update, Nov 5th 2022.

Who do you think invented the first espresso machine? We asked that question to Ian Bersten and he said Ernest Valente with the E61. Can you believe that, considering it was Ian Bersten who was the guy who restored the great Angelo Moriondo's 1884 designs to their rightful place in the coffee machine pantheon?

If you'd asked Barista Hustle who invented the espresso machine up until about four weeks ago, we would have said Angelo Moriondo more or less invented it. And we would have elaborated that at least it was the first large-stature coffee machine made for a bar. But then our perspective changed when a Barista Hustle reader started asking us a few history questions; one thing led to another and we pointed him towards Sebastien Delprat's awesome blog (which is in French). Then the reader came back to us and said, how come you didn't make a mention of Romerhausen or Etzensberger in The Espresso Machine online course? And then we responded 'Well … it's because we only wrote about the machines we know existed, either through photographic evidence or through versions actually surviving, not just the ones with patents'. But he didn't buy that response, and neither did we really.

So we approached Sebastien Delprat to find out for us, once and for all: Who really invented the Espresso machine?! Sebastien is the emerging authority on machine history. He's absolutely meticulous and passionate about his subject, and he has such a drive to uncover the truth, that you wonder how he finds time to also do his day job as a research engineer with a PhD in physics. So we present the first of four epic parts, entitled Espresso Quest. As you can imagine, the first thing Sebastien had to settle was the question of 'What is espresso?' He points out,

'The reality is that neither Moriondo nor Bezzera used the word espresso or express. In their time, the beverage was called caffè in bevanda, with an emphasis on the instantaneity of the process, or sometimes caffè istantaneo (which has a very different meaning today).'

We'll keep Part One of this series open-access for a couple of weeks so anyone without a BH Unlimited subscription can get the vibe.

Roasting Science

In our Roasting Science course this week, we wrap up our chapter on Bean Behaviour with a discussion of the importance of pressure in coffee roasting. We start by explaining how pressure affects a chemical reaction — and why it speeds up some reactions but slows others down. We take a look at how that affects the balance of reactions that take place during roasting. And finally, we look at the various attempts to roast coffee at high pressure over the years. Pressure has a lot of interesting effects in roasting, and researchers have been trying to build a pressurised coffee roaster since at least the sixties. As yet, though, no-one has cracked it.

Coffee beans during roasting are sometimes likened to miniature pressurised reaction vessels because of the effect pressure has on the chemical reactions taking place.

As always, we round off this epic and challenging chapter with a thorough recap, and a tough quiz to test yourself against. BH Unlimited subscribers have advanced access to each new lesson as the course progresses.

The Coffee Buyer's Guide to Colombia

This week in our Buyer's Guide to Colombia, we explore Colombia's traditional harvesting and processing methods. Coffee in Colombia is nearly all hand-picked, and harvesting has become the biggest bottleneck in the production process and the largest part of the cost of production.

The problem is only likely to get worse as increasing numbers of farm workers head to the cities in search of more lucrative work. With that in mind, the FNC has been working hard to find ways to make harvesting more efficient, but the particular conditions in Colombia make this very difficult.

Laying tarpaulins under the trees to collect fruit during picking can make harvesting up to 40% faster, according to the FNC

Colombia might be known as the home of experimental processing, but the traditional washed process has dominated for more than 100 years, and has changed very little in that time. Colombia's processing and drying methods are dictated by the wet climate and unpredictable rains — typified by the iconic sliding roofs found in so many beneficios in central Colombia.

New: My Education Hub

We've just launched our brand new online learning platform, making it far easier for users to navigate courses and lessons, while focussing all student activity and course progress on our new 'My Education Hub.'

Quick Links

Although the print version of Fresh Cup has been shelved after their founder Jan Weigel retired, the organisation is alive and well and their weekly newsletter is very appealing. We can't help admiring this feature: This Week in Corporate Coffee Washing.

James Harper, podcaster extraordinaire, is at it again with The Science of Coffee podcast. There are lots of interviews in a science-made-simple long format featuring, among other guests, the delightful Professor Steven Abbott (Author of this book for the Royal Society of Chemistry, and designer of this app for us.)

An Ad-Free Learning Experience

At BH we never do ads for other company's products on our website. There's no product placement in any of our courses, newsletters or blog posts. Our only income comes from what you pay for your subscriptions. When you see machinery or coffee gear mentioned in any of our educational material, or featured in our course videos, we have chosen to use that equipment because we like using it, because we think it's historically significant in the evolution of the espresso machine, or because it shows you something you need to see about modern coffee culture. It's as simple as that.