Evolution of Coffee Brewing Techniques from France

Coffee made its way to Europe during the 17th century, thanks to European travelers who brought it back from the Arabian Peninsula. Its popularity swiftly soared, giving rise to the establishment of coffee shops across Europe.

Around 1760, French visionaries turned their attention to refining coffee-making apparatus. Donmartin, a skilled tinsmith in Paris, devised an urn pot in 1763 that employed a flannel sack for infusion. Concurrently, another infusion contraption, named the "diligence," was crafted the same year by L'Ainé, also a tinsmith based in Paris.

In 1802, the first-ever patent for a coffee maker was issued, specifically recognizing a "pharmacological-chemical coffee making device through infusion." This groundbreaking creation was attributed to Denohe, Henrion, and Rouch.

During that very year, French chemist François Antoine Henri unveiled the "Caféolette," a coffee maker featuring two stacked containers separated by a filter. The upper container received boiling water, which then filtered through to the lower container, producing the brewed coffee.

By 1806, the first French patent for an enhanced French drip pot designed for producing coffee "via filtration without boiling" was awarded to Hadrot.

François Antoine Cadet introduced the porcelain coffee pot in 1808, while Sené presented the Cafetière Sené in 1815, a device tailored for creating coffee "without boiling." Subsequently, in 1818, a French individual named Laurens is believed to have conceptualized a coffee machine, now seen as an early precursor to the modern espresso machine.

The siphon coffee maker, conceived by Adrien Emile François Gabet in 1844, comprises two adjacent containers – one in glass for coffee and the other in ceramic for water – and operates on the principles of a vacuum.

In 1882, Louis Bernard Rabaut developed the prototype for the inaugural espresso machine in France. His design harnessed steam to compel boiling water through finely-ground coffee. Although the exact outcomes of his experiment remain somewhat obscure, he did share his schematics with the French Academy of Sciences in Paris.

Edward Loysel de Santais is credited with inventing the initial commercial espresso machine in 1843. He subsequently crafted an enlarged version for the Paris Exposition of 1855, reportedly capable of churning out 2,000 demitasse or espresso-sized cups of coffee per hour.
Evolution of Coffee Brewing Techniques from France

Invention of Melitta coffee maker

Melitta Coffee Filter and a popular drip system that goes with it including special pot, was invented by Melitta Bentz of Dresden Germany in 1908.

This is because she wanted better coffee for her family. She was looking for a way to brew the perfect cup of coffee with none of the bitterness cause by over brewing.

Melitta decided to invent a way to make a filtered coffee, pouring boiling water over ground coffee and having the liquid be filtered, removing any grinds.

Melitta did many experiments with different materials, until she found that her son’s blotter paper use for school worked best. She pierced holes in a tin container, put a circular piece of her son blotting paper in the bottom of it, and put this creation over the pot, and having coffee filtered.

The Melitta Automatic drip Coffee Maker was patented by Melitta Bentz in Germany on June 20th, 1908. At the Leipzig trade fair of 1909, she sold over 12 of her “coffee makers.”
Invention of Melitta coffee maker

Automatic espresso machine

Against a backdrop of economic depression and varied competition that included negative advertising, it took technology to advance the coffee business.

Many households switched from making coffee with a percolator, first invented in 1829 with an electric version available in the 1930s, to either a drip method or a vacuum coffee maker. Experimentation with creating an espresso machine began in the nineteenth century. The first commercial espresso machine was manufactured in Italy in 1905.

In 1933, Ernest Illy invented the first automatic espresso coffee machine. The espresso machine is perfected in 1945 with a piston that creates a high pressure extraction which produces a thick layer of crema .

Drawing its inspiration from an Italian invention, the Espresso machine, Nestlé launched Nespresso in 1986.
Automatic espresso machine

Invention of coffee maker by Melitta Bentz

A coffee maker called a percolator was invented in France in 1827. The percolator was designed to heat water and brew coffee in one operation, by pumping hot water through coffee grounds.

Filtered coffee also known as drip coffee is the newest method of coffee infusion and the preferred method of coffee aficionados. Filtered coffee was invented by a Dresden (Germany) housewife in 1908 named Melitta Bentz. At the time, people put ground coffee seeds into cloth bags and brewed them in hot water.

Bentz hankered after a tastier and more efficient way to brew her home-made coffee and had tired of the old choice between a Turkish coffee with grounds in the bottom of the cup, or with the grounds messily strained out through a dishcloth. Often, the grounds seeped into the coffee when the bags became worn, making the beverage undesirable to drink.

Bentz placed a sheet of blotting paper inside a brass pot that had holes in the bottom and poured hot water through the top. She discovered that the ground remained inside the paper, and did not seep into the beverage.

She patented it as the ‘Filter Top Device Lined with Filter Paper’. Bentz went into business with less than 1 Deutschmark and established a company Melitta to sell her wonderful new product.

The first year, Bentz sold 1250 coffee filters at a fair. By 1912, she had established a business a to manufacture coffee filters.

In the 1960s, the company began marketing a coffee maker in the United States with a wedge-shaped filter holder and filters that open like a pocket, so the water passes through only one layer of paper.
Invention of coffee maker by Melitta Bentz