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Step 2Step 2: Research or Dont reinvent the wheel .
First of, what is Espresso?
Wikipedia defines it as:
Espresso is a concentrated beverage brewed by forcing a small amount of nearly boiling water under pressure through finely ground coffee.
So, lets start writing some more constraints:
How much water and coffee?
Again, Wikipedia tells us that:
The size can be a single, double, or triple, which corresponds roughly to a 1, 2, and 3 US fluid ounce (approximately 30, 60 or 90ml) standard (normale) shot, and use a proportional amount of ground coffee, roughly 7–8, 14–16, and 21–24 grams; correspondingly sized filter baskets are used.
How much pressure?
Wikipedia says,
There is no universal standard defining the process of extracting espresso, but there are several published definitions which attempt to place constraints on the amount and type of ground coffee used, the temperature and pressure of the water, and the rate of extraction
A quick web search tells us that the maximum pressure is nine bars, but if we have less, we could still call our coffee “an espresso”.
I took a measuring cup and a scale and measured out water and coffee for 1, 2 and 3 shots, and due to design constraint number 1, this will have to be a single shot machine, since there was no way I could fit a larger machine in my pocket.
Now that I knew the dimensions that my machine was going to have, I went looking for “the competition”.
I googled “pocket sized espresso maker”, and found only two: The Handpresso and the Mypressi Twist.
The Handpresso uses a nicer relative of a bike pump to achieve the required pressure, while the Twist uses a gas cartridge to deliver the 9 bars of pressure. But both have one thing in common: they both require you to “add hot water”. This meant that there was an external heat source that got the water up to the “near boil”, as Wikipedia told us.
But, constraint number 4 tells us that it had to be self contained, so this puts my little machine in a different category.
This led to a problem…how to get the water to the correct temperature in a self-contained machine?
The only viable option was some kind of stove. A lot of online research further narrowed it down to an alcohol stove.
Now, a little bit about myself: I’m more than a bit clumsy, so the thought of alcohol burning close to me kind of freaked me out.
So I came out with design constraint number 6: It must be safe.
This constraint turned out to be the toughest one of them all.
The Espresso Machine is divided into 3 parts: The brew head, the boiler and the stove.
So, on to the build and more design choices!
Wikipedia defines it as:
Espresso is a concentrated beverage brewed by forcing a small amount of nearly boiling water under pressure through finely ground coffee.
So, lets start writing some more constraints:
How much water and coffee?
Again, Wikipedia tells us that:
The size can be a single, double, or triple, which corresponds roughly to a 1, 2, and 3 US fluid ounce (approximately 30, 60 or 90ml) standard (normale) shot, and use a proportional amount of ground coffee, roughly 7–8, 14–16, and 21–24 grams; correspondingly sized filter baskets are used.
How much pressure?
Wikipedia says,
There is no universal standard defining the process of extracting espresso, but there are several published definitions which attempt to place constraints on the amount and type of ground coffee used, the temperature and pressure of the water, and the rate of extraction
A quick web search tells us that the maximum pressure is nine bars, but if we have less, we could still call our coffee “an espresso”.
I took a measuring cup and a scale and measured out water and coffee for 1, 2 and 3 shots, and due to design constraint number 1, this will have to be a single shot machine, since there was no way I could fit a larger machine in my pocket.
Now that I knew the dimensions that my machine was going to have, I went looking for “the competition”.
I googled “pocket sized espresso maker”, and found only two: The Handpresso and the Mypressi Twist.
The Handpresso uses a nicer relative of a bike pump to achieve the required pressure, while the Twist uses a gas cartridge to deliver the 9 bars of pressure. But both have one thing in common: they both require you to “add hot water”. This meant that there was an external heat source that got the water up to the “near boil”, as Wikipedia told us.
But, constraint number 4 tells us that it had to be self contained, so this puts my little machine in a different category.
This led to a problem…how to get the water to the correct temperature in a self-contained machine?
The only viable option was some kind of stove. A lot of online research further narrowed it down to an alcohol stove.
Now, a little bit about myself: I’m more than a bit clumsy, so the thought of alcohol burning close to me kind of freaked me out.
So I came out with design constraint number 6: It must be safe.
This constraint turned out to be the toughest one of them all.
The Espresso Machine is divided into 3 parts: The brew head, the boiler and the stove.
So, on to the build and more design choices!
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Dec 9, 2011. 9:07 PMmagiccowy
says:
Doing Design and Technology at school this and next year, (only 2 days till schools out here in Australia). This will be a great help in my portfolio, thanks for the explanations.
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