Description
It used to be that people would travel for thousands of miles to get good coffee. As the story goes, the plant originated in what is now Yemen. It was popular with the Sufis there for its ability to drive away sleep. Coffee didn’t make it to Europe until 1600 when Pope Clement VIII, despite appeals to ban it, blessed it as a "Christian drink." The habit spread across Europe, until the Dutch, sick and tired of paying out the nose to import the stuff from Ethiopia and the Ottoman Empire, illegally smuggled live plants and cultivated them in hothouses in Holland.
Then, in 1720, the French brought the first vines to the Americas. The following weekend, the first Starbucks opened [citation needed]. Now, decent espresso is as close as across the street, but they have all that specialized equipment. High-pressure boiling water is forced through dense pucks of powdery ground coffee so quickly that the bitter compounds of coffee don’t have a chance to dissolve into your drink. The resulting espresso is earthy and sweet with a smooth foamy crema on top - it’s caffeinated perfection. All that pressurization usually means big bulky steam tanks that are way to heavy to fit in your messenger bag. So, we set our miniaturization experts on the problem.
The result was the Handpresso Wild portable espresso machine. It’s capable of generating 16 bar of pressure with a handpump. Put some hot water in the reservoir, place an E.S.E. Espresso pod in the chamber and release the switch. The pressure chamber forces the hot water through the coffee, creating a perfect little demitasse of rich black goodness. Our own coffee snobs here at ThinkGeek World Domination HQ rated the espresso "excellent," and "spectacular."
