Humanity’s obsession with coffee didn’t begin when Starbucks started popping up on every street thirty years ago. Our love affair with the versatile bean liquid has been going on for thousands of years. The man credited with ‘inventing’ coffee was an Ethiopian goat herder named Kaldi. One day, Kaldi noticed his goats were acting a little more energized than usual and found that they were eating peculiar berries. Kaldi decided to have a nibble on one of the berries himself and that was it. Coffee was discovered.
Let me espresso my gratitude...
Now espresso is another story. ‘Espresso’ is generally understood to come from the Italian word ‘pressed out’, which tells you how espresso itself is made. A set amount of hot water is forced through the coffee, resulting in a strong, concentrated ‘shot’ of espresso. As you may have guessed from the name, espresso is believed to have been invented in Italy in 1906 by La Pavoni, a brand that still makes coffee makers today and is now owned by another iconic Italian brand, Smeg.
I had the pleasure of visiting Smeg/La Pavoni’s HQ to try this iconic brand’s espresso machine out. The Mini Pro Espresso Machine is Smeg’s top-of-the-line machine and is still made in Italy. Not only does it have a manual pump lever for the coffee purists or experimenters, but it has an automatic setting should some members of your family not be as ‘into’ coffee as you.
While this machine isn't available in the U.S. yet and there's no word on when it'll make its American debut, it's definitely something to look forward to. In the U.K., the Mini Pro is available from Smeg UK for £1,399, John Lewis for £1,399 and Harrods for £1,399.
They say "Never meet your heroes."
As my household’s resident coffee fanatic (I prefer connoisseur), I was beyond excited to see that the Mini Pro has a fully manual traditional pump lever. This works differently to any other espresso machine I’ve tried. Instead of the machine flowing a set temperature and amount of water through your coffee grounds, you can choose the water temperature from 194°F to 210°F and precise water measurements.
As I’ve never used a manual espresso lever before, I pulled my shots using the automatic setting. Here’s a photo of the delicious, creamy double shot. This is extracted through a single-walled portafilter with a double shot of finely ground dark roast espresso.
They say pictures speak a thousand words, but I think that speaks two thousand. I’ve never seen espresso that delectable before. While I usually add at least 8 ounces of milk to my espresso, this time I added about half of this small cup to make a strong flat white.
No, it's not my best work, but this was the very first drink I made with the Mini Pro espresso machine. I was pretty proud of myself to get this result the first time.
Full of tricks
Not only is the Mini Pro easy enough to use that I was making delicious drinks on my first try, it's also versatile and customizable. As I touched on earlier, if you just want espresso and milk, you can use the automatic settings. However, if you really want to get into the nitty-gritty of weighing, dosing, calculating ratios, timing shots, and more, you can adjust pre-infusion time and dictate water flow through your espresso, too. This is the ideal coffee machine for coffee evangelists ready to take their hobby to the next level.
This is a serious espresso machine that has something to say. What is that something? Well, let's just say you can tell that it was made by the same people who invented the espresso machine.
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