Getting close, but not quite there.
Getting close, but not quite there.
A merica is, of course, the greatest country, but there are just some areas — especially in the gastronomic realm — where the Old World beats us. One of these areas is coffee.
On my first trip to Rome, I wouldn’t touch two drinks: sparkling water and coffee. By my second trip, in 2024, I’d mended my ways and was full of both by the time I left. To my chagrin, I missed out on incredible coffee in Florence, but I did manage to stop by one of Rome’s popular coffee shops, Sant’Eustachio Il Caffè, and try a cappuccino therein. Immediately upon my return to the States, I started ordering cappuccinos at every café I entered, searching for that magic taste that would transport me back to the land of catacombs and incredible art historians. Alas, my enthusiasm was short-lived, as I found bitterness in each cup and was determined not to dump sugar in everything.
I should disclose that I am completely new to the world of coffee. Yes, even in the journalism industry, I managed to avoid relying on caffeine for many years. Now that I’ve made peace with coffee beans, I find myself overwhelmed, entering a realm full of terminology, experimentation, and precision that would make a NASA engineer marvel.
Anyone can pop a coffee pod in a Keurig machine, or stuff the basket of the office coffee maker with Folgers, but if your tastes run toward perfection rather than stimulation, espresso is beckoning. Of course, perfectly brewed coffee can be made at home with a percolator, a coffee machine, a French press, a Moka pot, or a pour-over. My desire was for an espresso-based drink, however, and I soon learned what exactly that entailed.
If you want to make your own espresso-based concoctions at home, you will suddenly become aware that espresso isn’t necessarily a type of bean, but a way of extraction. In what a friend described to me as essentially fluid dynamics, espresso “is made by forcing hot water through finely-ground coffee beans. It is a quick extraction that results in a small amount of coffee, usually one ounce.” The lineup of new, thousand-dollar machines seemed extravagant for someone simply trying to relive an experience, so I began researching what I thought was the next best option: the Moka pot.
After much Googling and YouTubing and article-reading, I thought that perhaps, just perhaps, I could make a cappuccino just by using my mom’s Moka pot and milk frother — let’s call it a cheapoccino. Unfortunately for me, the more I researched, the more I realized that there is simply no such thing as a true cappuccino from a Moka pot, so back to the drawing board I went.
Rather than default to regular drip coffee, I actually just didn’t drink any coffee at all. It was back to the occasional hot chocolate for me, though I did ask my aunt — a veteran garage-saler — to keep an eye out for a decent espresso machine.
A few months later, she surprised me by finding just such a machine, which had lain dormant in a Florida garage for years. It took a few months and some long car rides, but eventually, my espresso machine finally came home to the counter of my apartment kitchen.
Despite my careful direction-reading, pampering, coaxing, Googling, and pleading, however, I could not get the machine to work. All my attempts to clean out its long-unused pipes were in vain, and I had other work to do. So there it sat on my counter, forlorn and silent, for another year, begging me to try again.
Then, this month, I went to Prince Edward Island, a Canadian maritime province. Why I was there is a story for another day, but during my week-long visit, I had about three cappuccinos, each one before 11 a.m. That caffeine boost, along with 10,000-plus steps a day, was a game changer for my energy levels, and espresso started beckoning me again.
Earlier this summer, I’d had the brilliant idea of simply turning my espresso machine upside down and gently shaking it, in hopes that this would unlock whatever air bubbles were trapped inside the fluid lines. Amazingly, this method worked, and I was able to run multiple cycles of hot water through the machine to clean out any excess junk. So now, fresh off my PEI vacation, I was ready to truly put it through its paces.
Unsurprisingly, my first espresso shot turned out fairly bitter. Granted, my palate for coffee is still developing, and since I generally try to avoid sugar in my coffee drinks, it will take some getting used to. This led to the rabbit hole of high-end, espresso-based creations — albeit only in research. Top-notch coffee setups can run thousands of dollars, mainly for a good machine, but also for: the burr grinder (which you must have, otherwise your grounds won’t be fine enough for true espresso), the coffee bean mister, the precise scales, the pressurized bean-keeper, the spring-loaded tamper, and the distributor. And don’t forget the premium beans to make your preferred roast.
To be honest, it all seemed a bit excessive. My borrowed Moka pot and frother, though unable to make a true cappuccino, were looking much more reasonable, and while my money-spending soul did want to purchase the supposed means to that perfect at-home drink, some version of “marry in haste, repent at leisure” was playing through my mind.
So what’s my current setup? I have what appears to be a DeLonghi BAR32 espresso machine, a canister of Illy Ground Espresso Classico Coffee — Medium Roast, plenty of small mugs and bowls, and a glass measuring cup. I’m also using my kitchen scale to weigh grounds and the extraction amount — yes, I’m aware that this isn’t kosher, but my current scale options are either the free one I already own or purchasing an expensive one with a built-in timer. Free is the best price, and I’m perfectly able to glance at my watch and count to 25 seconds, so we’ll stick with that for now. While it’s certainly not an exceptional setup, it is a workable one while I learn the basics of pulling a shot, the differences between various roasts, why bars of pressure matter (this is why a Moka pot can’t make espresso: it only uses one to two bars of pressure, while an espresso machine uses nine), the meaning of over-extraction and under-extraction, and more. I’ve already upped my game by switching to half-and-half for the steamed milk component, and I sprinkle a light touch of cocoa powder over the final product if I’m feeling fancy.
Actually, for true decadence, my goal is to concoct a mocha similar to the ones I ordered from Aroma during a trip to Israel. That popular coffee chain puts a square of chocolate in the bottom of their cups and lets the espresso pour out onto it. It’s delicious. Once I’ve gained a bit more confidence in my cappuccino skills, this is my next goal.
Could I just drink a cup of coffee with half-and-half like a normal person, without going through all this fuss? Yes. But the thrill of the experiment and the delight in the ritual make the siren call of the espresso machine hard to resist. Will I buy all that special equipment? Maybe, but not yet.
Though, all told, it’s certainly cheaper than flying back to Italy.