PRE-ESPRESSO
The two faces we meet at the beginning of the journey are forerunners of ‘espresso’ understood as a drink extracted in the moment specifically for the customer and in a short amount of time. These two people had some ingenious intuitions that went beyond the concept of boiled and decocted Turkish-style coffee, which was the method of preparing coffee for centuries, to the use of the first coffee pots or, as was the case in Milan in the 19th century, to coffee made from the grounds of the coffee served in the historical or luxury establishments of the Galleria Vittorio Emanuele II. This coffee was kept warm for hours in containers similar to large Thermos® flasks, transported after sunset on carts and served to night workers simply by opening a tap and almost kneeling down to get to the coffee (Genoeucc coffee). In this context, the inventions of Frenchman Edouard Loysel de la Lantais and Angelo Moriondo from Turin appear as ultra-modern and extremely attractive.
LOYSEL: a large quantity of percolated coffee
Edouard Loysel de la Lantais is not a key figure in the history of espresso, but he deserves a mention because at the Paris Exposition in 1885 he proposed a machine, the ‘hydrostatic percolator’, which caused a huge stir at the time. The machine was enormous and could make up to 2000 cups of coffee per hour. Everyone wanted to try the drink created by percolation (i.e. by dripping), but the resulting coffee remained a coffee infusion. With his invention, Loysel mainly solved the problem of having a large quantity of coffee to serve in a (relatively) short time. The machine, which works mechanically and does not use steam, was not exclusively designed for coffee and solved a number of needs. It could be used to prepare tea, coffee, hot chocolate, but also malt infusion for brewing beer or medicinal plants as a base for medicines.
Pages from the book “Senso Espresso. Coffee. Style. Emotions”
MORIONDO: a large quantity of steam extracted instant coffee
Angelo Moriondo from Turin may be considered the father of instant coffee and, above all, the man who came up with the idea of using steam to extract the beverage. He never called the coffee dispensed by his machines ‘espresso’, even though the term came into vogue well before his second invention, which also included single cup dispensing. The machine consisted of a boiler heated by a wood-burning cooker which, once brought to temperature, was moved with rollers and placed on a different cooker to maintain temperature and pressure. Documentary evidence tells us that for Moriondo, an inventive man of marketing, bringing the machine to the market was more about promoting his establishment (the Caffè Ligure in Turin). He subsequently aimed to become the sole representative of coffee from Brazil for Lombardy, Piedmont and Liguria, rather than wanting to be recognised as the inventor of a type of machine that was in any case unique.
Pages from the book “Senso Espresso. Coffee. Style. Emotions”
