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Espresso machines are used to make everyone’s favorite concentrated coffee beverage. Due to the nature of espresso, the essential hardware is different from the type found in other kinds of coffee machines. Espresso coffee, or caffè espresso, is brewed by forcing pressurized hot water through fine grains, resulting in the thicker consistency and foam so beloved all over the world. Thus special machines solely designed to brew espresso are necessary.

The first such unit was patented in Milan at the turn of the Twentieth Century, utilizing steam pressure, though today’s market offers pump action models as well. Home espresso machines were only developed in the 1970s, however, and they were expensive, large, and required some skill to operate. In fact, an honorific of a job title even exists for expert operators of an espresso machine, who are known as baristas, the Italian word for a bartender! But technological advances have now made home-brewing a much easier matter, further helping to fuel the growing popularity of espresso.

Espresso is not a specific bean or roast (level), but a method of making coffee. Thus, a variety of espresso coffees exist as the result of any number of different combinations of roasts and beans. In Italy, where this way of making coffee first began, darker roasts are more popular in the south while lighters ones predominate in the country’s northern areas.

Espresso can be served over gelato, a kind of ice cream, with vanilla being the traditional flavor, though any will do; this is called affogato, or “drowned” in Italian. Bombón, or “confection” in Spanish, means pairing espresso with condensed milk. Serve it corretto, Italian for “correct” (colloquially the word means “spiked”), and you offer it with a shot of brandy or some other liquor. Then of course there is espresso mocha, blended with chocolate – not to be confused with the coffee blend of the same name.