Coffeemakers are cooking appliances used to brew coffee without having to boil water in a separate container. While there are many different types of coffeemakers using a number of different brewing principles, in the most common devices, coffee grounds are placed in a paper or metal filter inside a funnel, which is set over a glass or ceramic coffee pot. Cold water is poured into a separate chamber, which is then heated up to the boiling point, and directed into the funnel. This is also called automatic drip-brew.
Brewing coffee through the ages
For hundreds of years, making a cup of coffee was a deceptively simple process. Roasted and ground coffee beans were placed in a pot or pan, to which hot water was added, followed by attachment of a lid to commence the infusion process. Throughout the 19th and even the early 20th centuries, it was considered adequate to add ground coffee to hot water in a pot or pan, boil it until it smelled right, and pour the brew into a cup.
The first modern method for making coffee—drip brewing—is more than 125 years old, and its design had changed little. The biggin, originating in France ca. 1800, was a two-level pot holding coffee in an upper compartment into which water was poured, to drain through holes in the bottom of the compartment into the coffee pot below. Around the same time, a French inventor developed the "pumping percolator", in which boiling water in a bottom chamber forces itself up a tube and then trickles (percolates) through the ground coffee back into the bottom chamber.
Electric drip coffeemakers
An electric drip coffee maker can also be referred to as a dripolator. It normally works by admitting water from a cold water reservoir into a flexible hose in the base of the reservoir leading directly to a thin metal tube or heating chamber (usually, of aluminum), where a heating element surrounding the metal tube heats the water. The heated water moves through the machine using the thermosiphon principle. Thermally-induced pressure and siphoning effect move the heated water through an insulated rubber or vinyl riser hose, into a spray head, and onto the ground coffee, which is contained in a brew basket mounted below the spray head. The coffee passes through a filter and drips down into the carafe. A one-way aromalock valve in the tubing prevents water from siphoning back into the reservoir. A thermostat attached to the heating element turns off the heating element as needed to prevent overheating the water in the metal tube (overheating would produce only steam in the supply hose), then turns back on when the water cools below a certain threshold. For a standard 10-12 cup drip coffeemaker, using a more powerful thermostatically-controlled heating element (in terms of wattage produced), can heat increased amounts of water more quickly using larger heating chambers, generally producing higher average water temperatures at the spray head over the entire brewing cycle. This process can be further improved by changing the aluminum construction of most heating chambers to a metal with superior heat transfer qualities, such as copper.
Throughout the latter part of the 20th century, a number of inventors patented various coffeemaker designs using an automated form of the drip brew method. However, it was not until 1972, with the introduction of the first commercially successful automatic drip-brew coffeemaker for home use, the Mr. Coffee, that the design became truly popular. Subsequent designs have featured changes in heating elements, spray head, and brew-basket design, as well as the addition of timers and clocks for automatic-start, water filtration, filter and carafe design, and even built-in coffee grinding mechanisms.
Pourover, water displacement drip coffeemakers
Based on a successful series of commercial coffee brewers using the pourover, water displacement method of drip operation, Bunn entered the home consumer market with a different type of automatic drip-brew machine. In this type of coffeemaker, the machine uses a holding tank or boiler pre-filled with water. When the machine is turned on, all of the water in the holding tank brought to near boiling point (approximately 200-207 °F or 93-97 °C) using a thermostatically-controlled heating element. When water is poured into a top-mounted tray, it descends into a funnel and tube which delivers the cold water to the bottom of the boiler. The less-dense hot water in the boiler is displaced out of the tank and into the a tube leading to the spray head, where it drips into a brew basket containing the ground coffee. The pourover, water displacement method of coffeemaking tends to produce brewed coffee at a much faster rate than standard drip designs. Its primary disadvantage is increased electricity consumption in order to preheat the water in the boiler. Additionally, the water displacement method is most efficient when used to brew coffee at the machine's maximum or near-maximum capacity, as typically found in restaurant or office usage.
Design considerations in coffee
A French Press coffee maker makes coffee coffeeA
At the beginning of the twentieth century, although some coffee machines tend to have a uniform design (including percolators, stove), published a number of other styling differences. In particular, the vacuum brewers the two completely separate rooms needed was an hourglass configuration was based on industrial designers. The interest in developing new designs for vacuum brewers during the American Arts & Crafts movement with the introduction of "Silex" brand coffee machines, with models of Massachusetts housewives Ann Bridges and Mrs. Sutton was revived. Your use of Pyrex solved the problem of vulnerability and fragility that this type of machine was commercially unattractive. In the 1930s, a simple, clean shapes, made of metal increasingly attracted the positive attention of industrial designers strongly influenced by the functionalist requirements of the Bauhaus movement and streamlining. It was during this time that Sunbeam Coffee Master brewer appeared slim vacuum, designed by renowned industrial designer Alfonso Iannelli. The popularity of glass and Pyrex bulbs temporarily revived during World War II, such as aluminum, chromium and other metals are used in traditional coffee machines is limited in availability.
A French Press coffee maker makes coffee coffeeA
At the beginning of the twentieth century, although some coffee machines tend to have a uniform design (including percolators, stove), published a number of other styling differences. In particular, the vacuum brewers the two completely separate rooms needed was an hourglass configuration was based on industrial designers. The interest in developing new designs for vacuum brewers during the American Arts & Crafts movement with the introduction of "Silex" brand coffee machines, with models of Massachusetts housewives Ann Bridges and Mrs. Sutton was revived. Your use of Pyrex solved the problem of vulnerability and fragility that this type of machine was commercially unattractive. In the 1930s, a simple, clean shapes, made of metal increasingly attracted the positive attention of industrial designers strongly influenced by the functionalist requirements of the Bauhaus movement and streamlining. It was during this time that Sunbeam Coffee Master brewer appeared slim vacuum, designed by renowned industrial designer Alfonso Iannelli. The popularity of glass and Pyrex bulbs temporarily revived during World War II, such as aluminum, chromium and other metals are used in traditional coffee machines is limited in availability.
The influence of science and technological progress as a motif in the postwar design was eventually felt in the production and marketing of coffee and coffee machines. Consumer guides emphasized the device is able to set standards for temperature and soaking time to do justice, and the ratio of soluble elements between brew and grounds to set. The industrial chemist Peter Schlumbohm on the scientific motif most purely in his "Chemex" coffeemaker, taking advantage of their first essay was in the early 1940s, the authority of science as a sales tool, the product is described as "away from the pharmacy of coffee, "and discuss in detail the quality of its products in the language of the laboratory:" the funnel of the hydrostatic Chemex creates ideal conditions for the unique ... Chemex extraction ". Schlumbohm unique brewer, a Pyrex vessel in the form of a cone filter to hold its own, it seemed nothing more than a piece of laboratory equipment, and surprising for a time popular in the otherwise highly automated, technology-obsessed1950s household.
In later years, coffeemakers began to adopt more standardized forms commensurate with a large increase in the scale of production required to meet postwar consumer demand. Plastics and composite materials began to replace metal, particularly with the advent of newer electric drip coffeemakers in the 1970s. During the 1990s, consumer demand for more attractive appliances to complement expensive modern kitchens resulted in a new wave of redesigned coffeemakers in a wider range of available colors and styles.
