When it comes to morning stimulants, most of us don’t experiment much with our favourite cuppa tea or coffee. We asked two very experienced coffee craftsmen and certified coffee lovers to tell us about how the new flavoured capsules of tea and coffee will be the next life-changing inventions of our times.
By Kunal Bhagat and Tuhin Jain
Gone are the days when we’d warm our hands and hearts over a steaming coffee waited upon. With a separate plea made for a double shot for the experience. Coffee lovers after all are just as discerning as wine connoisseurs who only need a whiff of their drink to know their make and just as tough to please.
For coffee geeks like, yesteryears international star Monica Bellucci, or our home grown superstar Shahrukh Khan, it’s espresso all the way. In Italy there’s a saying that literally means, “An espresso can awaken the old ghosts of Rome”. Such is its potency, hence often touted as the best wake-up-drink or shot, served in its most aesthetic shot glasses. You could be just pulling out of bed, and still bleary eyed, when all you do is put in a capsule in your espresso machine and push the button, before you proceed to open the curtains. It’s that short an interlude, no fumbling, no measuring, no nothing!
With the advent of coffee capsules, you now have a superior quality, stronger, more robust coffee, made ‘faster’. Espresso, a term originating from Italy means just that – ‘fast’ in Italian. In the early 1900s when Luigi Bezzera, a coffee aficionado, frustrated at how long it took to make his morning cup, added steam pressure to his coffee machine. In doing so, he not only accelerated the brewing process but found that he obtained a stronger, more robust cup of coffee. Although technically gifted, Mr. Bezzera enjoyed little success in marketing his product. It was Desidero Pavoni, an Italian businessman, who, having acquired the patent rights to Mr. Bezzera’s machine in 1905, successfully introduced espresso to the Italian market and changed the way we drink coffee.
(The writers are founders of Bonhomia)