How To Brew Perfect Coffee :: Making Great Coffee

UPDATED:  

From the moment coffee-drinking rook hold, an enormous amount of ingenuity and effort went into perfecting the art of brewing. Not content with the simple act of pouring hot water over grounds and letting it sit, inventive minds in Europe and the United States managed to produce an astonishing variety cf equipment - drips, filters, percolators and pressure machines, to name but a few.

Edward Bramah states in his classic Tea and Coffee: "Between 1789 and 1921 the United States Patent Office alone recorded more than 800 devices for brewing coffee, not to mention 185 for grinders, 312 for roasters and 175 miscellaneous inventions with sonic bearing on coffee". Automatic vending machines were later added to the list.

The Cafetiere

One of the earliest devices was the cafetiere. which made its debut in France around 1685. Its use became widespread throughout the reign of Louis XV. It was no more than a simple jug (carafe) with a heating plate warmed by a spirit lamp below.

It was superseded in about 1800 by the first percolator, invented by Jean Baptiste de Belloy, the Archbishop of Paris in Beiloy's cafetiere. the ground coffee was held in a perforated container at the top of the pot and hot water was poured over it. The water passed through the small holes in the container and into the pot below.

Unusual Early Coffee Brewing Inventions

A few years later after the invention of the cafetiere, a formidable American named Benjamin Thompson, also known as Count Rumford, moved to Britain. Dissatisfied with the standard of coffee served in those days it was subjected to lengthy boiling he set about inventing a coffee-maker and eventually came up with the ominous - sounding Rumford Percolator. It was a great success, instantly finding a place in the annals of coffee-making history.

Just before 1820, the coffee biggin - the predecessor of the filler - became popular in England. In this device, ground coffee was placed In a flannel or muslin bag suspended from the rim of an earthenware pot. Hot water was poured over but, because of the bag, the water remained in contact with the coffee for longer producing a different type of brew.

Brewing Coffee on a Large Scale

Up until the industrial Revolution, there was no real need to make coffee in large quantities. However, with the growth of workshop s and factories, combined with long working hours, some form of liquid refreshment was needed. Rail travel was becoming established, and with it, the evolution of the station buffet.

At the same time, coffee houses, and later on hotels and restaurants, needed to find a way of producing a continuous supply of the beverage in a quick and efficient manner. We thus have the start of the development of catering equipment.

Around 1840, a Heath Robinson-like piece of apparatus appeared in Britain, invented by Robert Napier, a well-known Scottish marine engineer. The machine worked on a vacuum principle in which coffee was siphoned from a heated container through a filter and into a receiving vessel. Though not very efficient, it was to provide inspiration for later inventions capable of producing coffee in industrial quantities.

Coffee was made on a larger scale in France in a monstrous contraption which Isabella Beeton in Modern Household Cookery refers to as "Loysel's hydrostatic urn". Invented in 1843 by Edward Loysel de Santais, the device worked on the principle of hydrostatic pressure in which the build-up of steam forces hot water through a valve and then down through the coffee grounds. It was a sensation at the Paris Exposition of 1855, where it supposedly produced two thousand cups of coffee an hour - presumably in small cups.

The Coffee Cona

The Cona (vacuum pot) was a rather unique system that became widespread in the late 1930s. This consisted of two interconnecting toughened glass containers placed on top of each other and heated by a spirit lamp or gas or electric heater. The water in the lower container was forced into the top and drained through the coffee grounds back into the lower container.