These are gorgeous machines

December 10, 2024 11:43 AM

A Fabulous Collection of Antique Espresso Coffee Machines [Flashbak]
posted by chavenet (24 comments total)

Those are some beautiful machines. However when I think antique, my mind goes here.
posted by evilDoug at 11:58 AM on December 10, 2024 [4 favorites]

Oh man, the chrome bumpers and grill on the Eureka are a hell of a thing.
posted by Greg_Ace at 12:01 PM on December 10, 2024 [1 favorite]

@evilDoug - that looks like it was made by a mad scientist.
posted by JustSayNoDawg at 12:27 PM on December 10, 2024 [2 favorites]

These ornate designs are lovely, and I also love the reduced, minimal direction of the Braun espresso machines. My folks have one almost like this.
posted by They sucked his brains out! at 1:04 PM on December 10, 2024 [2 favorites]

☕
posted by HearHere at 2:03 PM on December 10, 2024 [1 favorite]

I think it just might take a mad scientist to think "What if I shove high pressure water through coffee grinds for my morning coffee?"
posted by evilDoug at 2:28 PM on December 10, 2024 [2 favorites]

I have this print on the wall over my own far more modest espresso machine:

https://www.loc.gov/item/2017835431/

posted by adamsc at 2:59 PM on December 10, 2024 [2 favorites]

No love for Faema. As an espresso novice, I spent $1600 on one of their entry level machines back in the late 90s and still feel compelled to complain about it. The chrome-plated mild steel body and drip tray grille rusted, the drip tray cracked because it always had to be pulled past the rubber tube that emptied into it, the foam wand couldn’t be positioned over the drip tray and leaked in all over the counter during use, the water jug had no handle or lid and required you to reach a finger into the neck of it to extract it. Also the gaskets needed replaced regularly and service department at the DuPont St. Toronto retailer were assholes.
posted by brachiopod at 5:23 PM on December 10, 2024 [4 favorites]

Yep, sound like Italian design to me!
posted by Greg_Ace at 5:50 PM on December 10, 2024 [3 favorites]

I have an old La Pavoni Europiccola (the link is to a page from one of those great old school obsessive sites). A fussy little beast to get a good shot out of, but very simple and for the most part I can fix it myself. And it looks great on the kitchen bench.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 7:10 PM on December 10, 2024 [2 favorites]

The very Platonic ideal of Steampunk! Or should I say 'steamed puck'?

But I have never liked the machines that make espresso, or ever felt completely comfortable drinking it because of all that superheated water and corrosive liquid flowing through and over a substantial chunk of a periodic table of heavy-ish metals and past a gauntlet of rubber and plastic.

Oh well.
posted by jamjam at 7:37 PM on December 10, 2024 [1 favorite]

Two words: moka pot. I'm an admitted coffee snob (filtered coffee is just so flavorless to me) but I have a tiny kitchen with zero counter space and am not willing to blow thousands on a coffee maker. My wife bought me a Bialetti this year and it was life-changing. Cheap, very simple, and holy cow does it make good coffee.
posted by photo guy at 9:57 PM on December 10, 2024 [1 favorite]

Moka makes coffee quickly but is not espresso.

Espresso was invented by an italian capitalist to squeeze break time from his employees and was refined by Italians over 80 years to try to compensate for completely garbage ingredients. Fine grind, dark roast, steamed milk all exist because the green was crap and people wanted it to taste like anything else. Italian machines and espresso are stagnant -- even reactionary -- compared to the tech coming from elsewhere, because they're stuck with old definitions of what espresso can and can't be that don't serve modern origin-forward coffees well.

KVDW, Slayer, Synesso are all at the cutting edge of tech and looks. (I definitely don't own my Decent for its looks.)

That said, some of these are awfully stylish, I like that mustard paneling on the Bianchi machine a lot. If you like these be sure to check out James Hoffmann's restored Faema. (Good-looking but I wouldn't touch the UX with a five foot pole.)
posted by supercres at 10:32 PM on December 10, 2024 [2 favorites]

supercres: I clicked through and when I saw one of those sites had a banner "FIRMWARE UPDATE" I chuckled to myself. The only firmware my little chrome darling has is a pressurestat. As someone who roasts their own beans at home, I'm happy with what it can do with different varieties with a little grind tweaking and experimenting with the lever.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 12:49 AM on December 11, 2024 [1 favorite]

Moka makes coffee quickly but is not espresso.

Thanks for gatekeeping, starting to remember why I don't bother to engage in banter on this site anymore. I didn't say it was espresso, I was just offering an observation to other people on here who didn't like the complexity of espresso machines or who also live in tiny-ass European apartments. It is still brewing using pressured steam, which is different and will give a far different result than what most Americans call coffee.
posted by photo guy at 3:41 AM on December 11, 2024 [5 favorites]

Now I feel really old because most of the antique machines pictured were from much later than I expected when I saw "fabulous collection of antique espresso machines." I guess I've reached "antique" status myself.

Some of them are contemporaneous with my own espresso-freak period, I think.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 6:52 AM on December 11, 2024 [3 favorites]

@photo guy, I don't think that was gatekeeping. I'm pretty sure that was an enthusiast who does not understand that not everybody wants to draw the distinctions an enthusiast does.

Also, you were the one who brought up non-espresso-machine coffeemakers in a thread about espresso machines.
posted by Aardvark Cheeselog at 6:55 AM on December 11, 2024 [1 favorite]

I've been trying to find my copy of a book by Diane Brill, in which she describes the various different nationality approaches to lingerie--classic, adventurous, not-lingerie-at-all; I always recall her description of Italian fashion as (paraphrase) "the very latest thing; if you see buckles and straps on the runway they're gonna be in the lingerie too" which somehow explains all these machine designs. Somebody just had to have the latest beige panels or zippy accent swirls. Thanks for posting, although I'll probably be a little sad looking at my dowdy Mr Coffee today. Still, it works.
posted by winesong at 8:57 AM on December 11

I love that the modernist ones evoke that same aesthetic as the contemporary design language used at Olivetti and Zagato. I'm such a sucker for clustered lines and big chunky futurist plastickiness.
posted by sonascope at 10:52 AM on December 11 [1 favorite]

In my circles moka pots are often described as "stovetop espresso". I think we could all relax about this.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 12:32 PM on December 11

Relax?? With all this espresso in me?!?
posted by Greg_Ace at 12:49 PM on December 11 [1 favorite]

Mod note: I love, love, LOVE looking at retro design, so this post has been shared to the sidebar and Best Of blog!
posted by Brandon Blatcher (staff) at 4:16 PM on December 11

I have an old La Pavoni Europiccola (the link is to a page from one of those great old school obsessive sites). A fussy little beast to get a good shot out of, but very simple and for the most part I can fix it myself. And it looks great on the kitchen bench.

That is a beautiful little machine!
posted by Well I never at 5:42 PM on December 12 [1 favorite]

I am aware that I'm being a pretentious old fart, like those motoring writers who fetishise some old sports car by telling how great it is to feel closely linked to the road through its stupid steering and bum-shattering suspension and how it's good actually to be able to make running repairs if you have to (you will need to) etc etc... but yeah I really love an old piston espresso machine. Modern machines are amazing because you can get a good shot most of the time with so little practice, and I have to work to get the occasional great shot and as a result value the effort I've put into becoming a master of my machine. But. It's a thing.
posted by i_am_joe's_spleen at 11:02 PM on December 12