May/June '07
Espresso Yourself

by Michael Parente

    We should never have gone to Italy. That’s where we became addicted. The first cup of cappuccino seemed innocent enough. However, there is something Italians do to their coffee that altered our taste buds and left us lusting for our daily taste of Heaven. When we were there, it was easy to get our daily “fix,” but it proved difficult to recreate the experience at home. When we moved aboard our 30’ steel sloop, Twice in a Blue Moon, it threatened to be impossible.
   Making good coffee requires only two ingredients: good coffee and a good coffeemaker. It is the interplay between the two that makes either a pleasant or unpleasant experience. This story is not about the coffee. We were able to find adequate espresso nearly everywhere we cruised. The coffeemaker, on the other hand, turned out to be the hardest ingredient to supply.
   In Italy, coffeemakers are engineered to the level of high art, and polished brass and chrome machines are seen at every bar in the country. Even the poorest farmhouse, however, is capable of producing an excellent cup of java in smaller electric and stove-top espresso machines. That lower level was what I figured would be easily achievable. How wrong I was!
   My first espresso machine was not really mine. Since my boss was also a lover of the black nectar, a small Braun electric espresso machine to use at work seemed like the perfect Christmas gift. As it turned out, however, making espresso at work did not fit into his schedule. Fortunately, it fit perfectly into mine and provided my daily mid-afternoon jolt for many years. Later, I got one of my own, and I was able to make a good cup of coffee at home as well.
   When we moved onto our boat, everything changed. At first, we were hooked up to shore power on the dock, so the Braun was sufficient. Knowing that we would eventually be “off the grid” as we cruised, however, we got our first stove-top unit. It was a stout piece of construction that heated the water in a small pressure-cooker-like vessel. The pressure forced the heated water through an arm and down through a basket containing the coffee grounds. This is similar to the Braun in theory, but it lacked the handle on the basket, which anyone familiar with coffee making in Italy knows is used for the twist-invert-and-rap motion for dislodging the grounds from the basket. Additionally, there was always a significant amount of water left in the pressure vessel — water that had just enough coffee in it to make it unusable as water. It was not acceptable to throw all that water away every day, especially in the Bahamas, where water is precious.
   Then I had one of my bright ideas. I would strip the Braun of all its plastic parts and put what remained over the boat’s stove. The final contraption looked like a metal skeleton and not unlike a miniature space station. The resulting cup of coffee was good, and the grounds removal and cleanup were as good as it gets. The problem lay in heating the pressure vessel. It was narrower than the burner on the stove, so it sat in the middle of the flames rather than above them, which heated parts of the vessel I did not want heated. Also, it didn’t stand up by itself, which is no trivial matter.
   The answer turned out to be using an old coffee can to hold the pressure vessel. I removed both the top and bottom of the can and made four slits a third of the way and then bent out the sides for stability and to lower the pressure vessel close enough to the flames. At this point, however, my wife thought the contraption was beginning to push the barrier where function overtakes good looks. What really doomed it, however, was that the final contraption did not store well, always seemed to be in the way, and still wasn’t that stable. Even a small wake from a passing boat threatened to topple it.
   In Beaufort, South Carolina, an evening stroll led us to a store that sold everything for the kitchen, including stovetop espresso machines. Only small units were on the shelf, but the owner just happened to have a used medium-sized one in the rear. What he brought out was like machines we had seen in Italy — but it also looked like someone had used the little coffeemaker for smelting metal. The price was right, though, so we decided to buy it. After a major cleaning, it provided a fine cup of coffee for several months — until we unintentionally turned it into a smelter as well. The problem was that as soon as the coffee began to enter the upper chamber, it spurted noisily. We couldn’t tell by the sound when the lower chamber was dry, and unfortunately, that led to overheating, which melted the internal rubber gasket.
   The choice of our most recent coffeemaker was an accident. I had thought that I had seen an exact replacement for our melted-down coffeemaker. In fact, such was not the case — I found something better: a Bialetti six-cup unit similar, but with several improvements. The first was the styling. In Italy, this is known as in modo Italiano: polished stainless steel in a form not unlike a Brancusi sculpture.
   But would this vessel be prone to the same problems as the other? No! One of the design features of this beautiful instrument is its non-sputtering operation. Only when the coffee is fully brewed does it start making noise. Meltdown is no longer an issue. Additionally, we can keep the top open to monitor the process without coffee sputtering all over the stove. The final design feature which made me realize that this must be the best coffee maker is the logo. It is a stout little Italian gent with hat, mustache, and the international symbol of the raised index finger, which says it all: numero uno.
    Now if you will excuse me, I must get back to my coffee.