Posted by Tom Moertel Tue, 05 Apr 2011 16:50:00 GMT
Has anyone tried the Presso hand-powered espresso maker? It seems that some people have figured out how to get good espresso from it.
I’m wondering if it’s reliably good espresso. If it is, the Presso might make a good take-into-work espresso maker.
Any experience reports?
Posted in espresso
Tags espresso, presso
6 comments
no trackbacks
Posted by Tom Moertel Fri, 18 May 2007 05:21:00 GMT
A strange thing happened to me over the weekend. While traveling, I stopped at a Sheetz gas station / convenience store in Meadville, Pennsylvania. This store, I noticed, was serving espresso. Curious, I ordered a double, my usual test-out-the-new-place order.
When I received my double, I was prepared for the worst. I had learned the hard way that few coffee houses in the United States can make a decent espresso. And this Sheetz was not a coffee house. My grim expectation was only reinforced by what I had in my hand – a paper coffee cup, feeling ominously heavy. Based on the weight, I knew the espresso was going to be over-extracted – watery and probably sour, too.
After I paid and left the store with my Big Cup Of Espresso, I paused in the sunlight for a closer look. Something wasn’t right. The cup was one-third full, but the crema actually looked pretty good, unlike what I would have associated with insanely over-extracted espresso. When I took a taste, I was surprised again: the espresso was pretty good. While not what I would call a great shot, it was perfectly drinkable and better than what I expect from Starbucks.
It was then that I realized that something unusual was going on at Sheetz. If the espresso I was drinking didn’t look over-extracted, and if it didn’t taste over-extracted, and yet it did fill one third of a 12-oz. coffee cup, it couldn’t have been a double. It must have been a quad.
My curiosity piqued, I decided to call Sheetz and ask what was really in my cup. I ended up talking with John, their coffee specialist, and he (besides being a nice guy) confirmed that, at Sheetz, a single serving of espresso is about 2 ounces in volume and is made from 14 grams of coffee. My double serving, then, was made from two 14-gram pulls, for 28 grams of coffee in total. So I had, indeed, been drinking what at most coffee houses would have been four shots.
Mystery solved.
Based on my conversation with John, I expect that espresso at Sheetz is likely to be fairly consistent. I hope, then, that the sample I tried at the Meadville store is a good predictor of what I can get at other Sheetz locations. If so, I may have found a solution to the problem of finding decent espresso when on the road.
Have you tried straight espresso at Sheetz? If so, what did you think?
Update 2007-05-22: On Saturday, 19 May, I tried another sampling of Sheetz’s espresso, this time at the Grove City, Pennsylvania store. I ordered a “single” serving, equivalent to a double at most coffee houses. The preparer, to my disappointment, pulled the shot into a 12-oz. coffee cup and then, to my dismay, poured the shot from the 12-oz. cup into a 2-oz. cup, leaving much of the crema behind and resulting in a drink that looked damaged. The taste was damaged, too – slightly watery with a mild sour note.
Thus my second trial of Sheetz’s espresso was disappointing. I can only hope that my preparer’s two-cup technique was her own, unique variation on the standard practice at Sheetz. In any case, if you order a single at Sheetz, play it safe: ask that your shot be pulled directly into a 2-oz. cup.
Posted in espresso
Tags coffee, espresso, sheetz
8 comments
no trackbacks
Posted by Tom Moertel Tue, 31 Jan 2006 02:57:00 GMT
I love espresso. It’s my favorite way to enjoy coffee. Even so, I almost never order espresso in coffee shops because, here in the United States, very few coffee shops have mastered the exacting process by which espresso is made. Dr. Josuma John of the Josuma Coffee Company writes that “more than 95 percent of North American espresso is poorly made, and, in fact, undrinkable.” My experience with Pittsburgh-area coffee shops in the last decade provides no evidence to refute Dr. John’s claim.
If espresso in the United States is so bad, why do Americans drink enough of it to support a Starbucks on every street corner? The reason is that Americans drink espresso almost exclusively in the form of milk-based beverages: cappuccinos, lattes, and mochas. Milk and flavored syrups are the main attractions. Espresso serves only as a coffee-flavored backdrop in which bitterness, a characteristic of poorly made espresso, complements the abundant sweetness of milk laced with sugar syrups. American coffee-shop owners thus have little incentive to offer better espresso to their customers – bad espresso is good enough.
Because of this sad reality, I have developed through hard experience the following reliable guideline for ordering espresso at American coffee shops: Don’t. The one exception I make is for new coffee shops, at which I will try a double espresso, just to see what I get. Almost always, I get a bad espresso, bitter and watery.
And that is what I had expected back in April 2005, when I spotted the brand-new sign for Aldo Coffee Co. in my home town of Mt. Lebanon, Pennsylvania, located in Pittsburgh’s South Hills. I went in, dragging my wife along, and placed my order.
Then something unusual happened. The barista asked me, somewhat hopefully it seemed, if I drank espresso regularly. When I said yes, she seemed pleased. When she followed up by asking me if I read alt.coffee, I was stunned. When I observed that she was timing my shot, my brain actually shut down for a few seconds while it forcibly recalibrated itself to accommodate the seemingly impossible: that I was standing in a coffee shop in my home town, conversing with a barista about alt.coffee, and mere seconds away from receiving what was very likely to be good espresso.
Read more...Posted in good stuff, espresso, pittsburgh
Tags aldo, coffee, espresso, mtlebo
9 comments
1 trackback
