All over the world, coffee is a beverage that has come to mark the days of those who can drink it and have learned to appreciate it. It is not just an energising break, but a real culture made up of different origins, different customs and different techniques for extracting the coffee drink in powder form.
Coffee is not just a drink, but a habit
In Italy, however, espresso coffee has a real tradition of its own. And like every custom, it is made up of certain rituals, one of which is going to the bar to enjoy your espresso to perfection.
In fact, the whole coffee tradition is also derived from the relationship with its consumption: according to history, Italian coffee is ‘espresso’ for two reasons:
- The first is that it is prepared on the spot, expressly so.
- The second is that it is also drunk quickly, standing at the bar counter.
The practice of espresso has origin in the bar, but it has evolved
This is how it was born and how it is still taken throughout Italy. Alongside this historic trend, however, wonderful new opportunities have opened up over the years. More and more coffee machines have made their appearance, capable of preparing at home the espresso that we could previously only find on the counter of a bar.
Today, years later, there is a wide range of espresso coffee machines on the market. A great many models have been developed, which could generally be ascribed to three categories: manual, automatic and super-automatic coffee machines (to date the most popular, but also the least durable).
Espresso machines are in fact increasingly common in homes
Therefore, the home espresso machine is nowadays a machine that more and more people want to have in their homes, becoming rightfully one of the almost essential household appliances, given the demand on the market.
Having your own coffee machine brings many advantages
This spread is more than logical: having your own coffee machine brings a whole series of advantages and improvements to your lifestyle that, once discovered, will be difficult to ignore in the future.
The first coffee of the day is the most important: make it to your taste.
First of all: if you start the day with a good coffee, it will be a good day. Nothing puts you in a better mood than to start the day with the taste of your favourite coffee.
Together with a balanced breakfast, which is the most important meal of the day, drinking a good coffee in the morning immediately activates our head and makes us ready to face the day.
In fact, every coffee has a different function: there is the coffee you take after lunch to start digestion, there is the one you take in the middle of the morning to maintain your concentration, and then there is the one in the afternoon to enjoy in company as an excuse to have a chat.
The wake-up coffee is perhaps the most important, because it sets the mood for the whole day ahead.
You can discover the amazing world of coffee culture: it is boundless.
There is literally a world of fragrances and types of ground coffee to discover, just waiting for you to get curious. Becoming passionate about coffee means embarking on a journey that will take you around the globe to savour different fragrances and types, which you will learn to know and appreciate over time in order to enjoy your favourite beverage to the full.
The culture of coffee is comparable to that of wine, made up of both studies on its organoleptic properties and gastronomic pairings to make the experience as sublime as possible.
Nobody can prepare your ideal coffee better than you.
Learning how to prepare your own coffee with a home espresso machine is also the quickest way to get exactly the coffee you want. Having control of the preparation allows us, for example, to adjust the pressure between 15 bar and 19 bar, so that we can manage the extraction phase and thus the coffee we are going to drink.
In addition, putting your hand on your coffee machine means being sure, for example, that you have the right attention to the necessary maintenance after each use.
This is because, obviously, even the best coffee machines, if they are not cleaned frequently, can worsen the quality of the drink they prepare.
An espresso machine at home is an ecological choice.
Choosing a home espresso machine that is not super-automatic, i.e. that prepares coffee in capsules, is also an ecological choice.
Clearly everything about this way of preparing espresso is more polluting, just take into consideration the fact that in order to produce the same pod logically polluting substances are dispersed into the environment.
Not to mention that the capsule itself, once used, is itself a polluting and non-recyclable element. The consumer who chooses to buy a high quality machine to prepare coffee at home is in fact a conscious consumer: he chooses what he likes best.
It therefore makes sense that awareness should also include an aspect of attention to one’s ecological footprint on the planet.
An espresso machine for the home creates convivial occasions.
Coffee time is also, and above all, a convivial practice, as we Italians know more than well.
Coffee is a drink to be shared, during which conversations are exchanged and a short quality break from the pressures of everyday life is enjoyed.
Having a professional coffee machine in the house means having a very elegant excuse to spend quality time with your guests and diners.
A beautiful coffee machine can also furnish.
Having a high quality coffee machine means, if the choice is made critically, furnishing your home with a piece of design, enriching your kitchen by creating an elegant and convivial coffee corner.
So in this sense we are talking about the design of this type of machine. Automatic coffee machines, as well as super automatic ones, try to pursue more modern and futuristic lines and shapes.
Clearly, however, their design is closely linked to their functions, so that what might seem like a futuristic feature today might tomorrow be considered old, and consequently the design of the machine would age with it.
Just think of the fact that until the advent of the touch screen all models had buttons, whereas now almost all of them implement this type of technology. And still using the same example: you only have to look at a model from ten years ago (just make a comparison with mobile phones, which have now become smartphones) to realise how much the touch screen has improved from year to year, immediately making an older model seem old.
Pontevecchio manual machines are handcrafted pieces.
On the other hand, having a manual lever espresso machine in the house, like the Pontevecchio ones, represents an investment in terms of design that never loses its value with the passing of time.
The lines of our models are classically elegant and harmonious, and the shapes have finishes that make them valuable. Each Pontevecchio lever machine, in fact, can be considered to all intents and purposes a work of artisan craftsmanship, as it is manually assembled by highly qualified artisan personnel. It is no coincidence that no two models of Pontevecchio lever machines are exactly the same, because being handcrafted they differ in the small details that are the result of manual assembly.
With practice, manual machines become faster
A common mistake is to believe that choosing a manual machine will extend the time in the morning for breakfast and coffee preparation. This is a completely wrong notion because, first of all, manual machines, like our models, have a power button that makes them operational in a very short time, so that after nine minutes from switching on you can already enjoy your perfect espresso, after having put the water at the right temperature and having prepared the ground coffee.
A manual machine also gives you the experience of extraction
There is no comparison in the experience of preparing and tasting coffee, when it comes to manual extraction machines, because they recall the original tradition and bring it to the present day in all its grace, bringing it to us in a delicious cup of dark, steaming drink.
Choose to enrich not only your coffee experience, but also your kitchen décor, by visiting our website and finding the model of manual espresso machine that suits you best, from a variety of elegant lines and colour variations.