【Espresso】寻找一杯完美的咖啡

Espresso coffee

意式浓缩咖啡

In search of a perfect cup

寻找一杯完美的咖啡

Espresso coffee requires as much technology and taste as fine wine. Where to find the finest?

与优质的好酒一样，意式浓缩咖啡也需要一定的技术和品鉴方法，那么，从哪里去寻找最合适的呢？

Dec 20th 2001 | PARIS, PAUDEX, TREVISO AND TRIESTE | from the print edition

译者：薄荷味道0

LOOK into a small, elegant cup of espresso coffee and examine carefully the top layer of foam, known to aficionados as crema. Made of tiny gas bubbles trapped in a liquid film, the foam seals the coffee's intense aromas and flavours and locks in heat. A good crema depends on the quality of the coffee and on the skill with which it is prepared. In a perfect espresso it is velvety, with a warm and characteristic hazel-brown or “tiger-skin” colour. It is also persistent, lasting as long as the drink, and with sufficient body to support the weight of granulated sugar for a few seconds.

透过小巧优雅的意式咖啡杯，细观上层的细沫，这就是咖啡发烧友狂热追捧的克丽玛。由细微的气泡凝聚成一层液态膜，包裹住了咖啡浓烈的香气，同时也锁住了热气。一份优质的克丽玛取决于咖啡的质量以及制作时的精良程度。完美的意式浓缩，它带有醇和绵柔的口感，和淡褐色的“虎斑”。通常，克丽玛将一直保持这种形态，并且可以让砂糖支撑在上面几秒钟不下沉。

Perfect espresso is the ultimate coffee. It ranks with fine wine for the complexity of its chemistry. Unlike wine, however, it does not improve with age. “Espresso” means prepared on the spur of the moment, and it has become the trademark of rich, intense coffee that must also be consumed at once. Its taste is so dense, though, that it can remain in the mouth for up to half an hour after drinking.

完美的意式浓缩是未经调制的咖啡。它拥有和好酒同样丰富的有机物质。但是和酒不同的是，它不会因为年份的久远而变得更加醇和。“浓缩咖啡”往往意味着瞬间的萃取，并且，优质醇香的咖啡必须尽快饮用。意式浓缩的口感相当醇厚，在饮用半小时后仍旧回味无穷。

For decades, making espresso was either an art or a lottery. The artists were trained baristas, skilled operators who worked big espresso machines in the coffee bars of Europe. For amateurs trying to make their own espresso it was more a matter of luck, the occasional success a reminder of the reason for the quest. In the early 1990s, only one household in every five then owning an espresso machine used it regularly, because the results were so unreliable.

在过去几十年，浓缩咖啡的制作是一门艺术，同时也需要运气。它们的制作者往往都是接受过培训的咖啡师，在欧洲咖啡馆大型的咖啡机前熟练操作的技术员。对于业余爱好者来说，自行制作一份浓缩咖啡则更多地依赖于运气，偶成之功诠释了追求的意义。在20世纪90年代初，由于较低的成功率，每五个拥有咖啡机的家庭中仅仅只有一个家庭会经常使用它。

Today, however, perfect espresso can be found almost anywhere. It can even be made at home thanks to clever new machines that produce consistently good coffee with a minimum of fuss from neatly-packaged individual portions. Among the most influential pioneers have been illycaffe, an Italian family firm based in Trieste, and Nespresso, a division of Nestlé, a Swiss food giant. Nespresso has combined simple-to-use espresso machines with clever marketing to transform consumption at home. Greater reliability has made espresso one of the fastest-growing segments of the otherwise troubled world coffee market.

然而现在，上好的意式浓缩已随处可见。通过精巧的新款咖啡机，仅用少量的袋式包装咖啡，就可以持续稳定地制作出上好的咖啡。意大利里雅斯特的家族企业Illy咖啡，和瑞士食品巨头雀巢的子品牌Nespresso是其中最具影响力的两个代表。Nespresso将一体式自动咖啡机与高明的营销手段相结合，将咖啡的制作带到了家庭。

The bean before steam

蒸汽制法出现前的咖啡

By the middle of the 19th century, coffee was well established in Europe as an important trade commodity. Despite growth in the market, however, there had for centuries been little change in the way that coffee was made—either by the so-called Turkish method or by infusion. In both preparations, roasted coffee beans are first ground and then placed in water. The Turkish method requires that the water be boiled three times before the grounds are allowed to settle and the drink is poured. Infusion is simpler—ground coffee is steeped for a few minutes in boiled water and the resulting liquid is then strained before serving.

在19世纪中叶，咖啡已经成为欧洲重要的日常贸易商品之一。尽管咖啡市场在不断增长，然而其制作手法却几个世纪都没有太大变化，无外乎土耳其式或者浸泡式。在这两种制法中，烘焙过后的咖啡豆均先是经过研磨，后置于水中。土耳其制法需要将水煮沸三次，而后咖啡渣沉淀，将上层咖啡倒出饮用。浸泡式则要简单一点，将咖啡粉浸泡在沸水中几分钟，接着在饮用前把咖啡过滤即可。

These methods produced acceptable coffee, but each had serious drawbacks. Multiple boilings replaced the Turkish coffee's delicate flavours with a strong, astringent drink that was routinely sweetened and often further flavoured with cardamom. Steeping, on the other hand, was too feeble to extract more than around 20% of the oils and volatile substances that give coffee its distinctive aroma and flavour.

这两种方法都可以制作出相对满意的咖啡，但是都有各自的缺点。多次的沸腾使得土耳其咖啡缺乏清爽之感，取而代之的，是厚重苦涩的口感。通常人们会在咖啡中加入糖，或者进一步用小豆蔻进行调制。而浸泡式则显得要清淡一些，少了20%左右的油脂和香气，却赋予了咖啡与众不懂的香气和风味。

Late in the 19th century, a new method of preparation, known as percolation, offered an improvement and laid the foundations for the espresso revolution that began around 1900. Percolation involved passing boiling or near-boiling water through ground coffee, using either gravity or the light pressure created by steam.

在19世纪后期，新的制作方法产生了。在原来浸泡萃取的基础上，作了一些改进，为20世纪的浓缩咖啡奠定了基石。采用重力或者由蒸汽产生的轻压使沸水或者接近沸腾的水通过咖啡粉。

More important as a technological breakthrough was the mocha method. In this, water is boiled in a lower chamber and forced by steam pressure through a metal filter containing the ground coffee into an upper chamber from which it can be served. The contact between the coffee and the water is relatively brief, lasting around a minute. This produces coffee that is strong and sometimes sufficiently bitter that it needs sweetening.

虹吸式是一项更加重要的突破性进展。该种制作方法，是通过水在下方的容器中沸腾，产生压力使水通过过滤装置进入上方装有研磨咖啡的壶中。咖啡和水的接触时间很短，大概持续1分钟左右。以此制作出来的咖啡口味比较浓厚，有时候会因为苦味过重而需要加糖进行调和。

Espresso coffee also relies on pressure, but whereas a mocha pot produces only one atmosphere of pressure, espresso machines require at least nine and ideally ten. Drunk immediately, espresso transcends other coffees thanks to the greater extraction of essential coffee aromas and flavours. The first recognisable espresso machine was exhibited at the Paris fair of 1855. However, it is generally accepted that the inventor of the modern espresso machine was Luigi Bezzerra, an Italian entrepreneur who began commercial manufacture of espresso machines in 1901.

意式浓缩和压力密不可分，虹吸式咖啡只需要普通的大气气压，咖啡机则需要至少九倍甚至10倍的大气压。浓缩咖啡在萃取上更加充分，也更好地保留了咖啡原本的风味，因此在快饮时口感要优于其他咖啡。第一台可追溯的咖啡机于1855年在巴黎展会上出展。随后，它很快被大众接受，它的发明者Luigi Bezzerra在1901年开始将其投入商业生产。

His were cumbersome beasts that relied on steam to create the high pressure required, and they demanded skilled operators to control a series of taps. But they were a hit in bars and brasseries, and they changed Italian coffee-drinking habits for good. Espresso takes a mere 2% of the world market for roasted coffee, but it accounts for half the Italian market.

Luigi Bezzerra的咖啡机比较笨重，主要采用蒸汽来产生所需高压，还需要技术熟练的咖啡师来操控一系列的龙头。但是他们还是在咖啡馆中取得了不小的市场份额，同时改善了意大利咖啡的饮用习惯。意式浓缩仅消耗了世界烘焙类咖啡不到2%的使用量，却在意大利的咖啡市场创造了一半的销量。。

Others soon followed Bezzerra into production, and some of the newcomers made important innovations. In 1933, Francesco Illy founded illycaffe in Trieste and two years later produced the “Illetta”, the first machine to measure the quantity of water automatically, and the first to use compressed air rather than steam to create pressure. In 1945, a new machine made by Gaggia, another Italian firm, greatly simplified the overall design, introducing a spring-loaded lever to drive a piston and compress the water.

其他制造商也逐渐跟随Bezzerra进入到这个行业，同时一些新加入的厂商在原来的基础上作了巧妙的改进。1933年，Francesco Illy在Trieste（意大利东北部港市）成立了illy咖啡，并且在两年后开始投产“Illetta”——这类咖啡机首次采用了自动取水技术，并且用压缩空气代替了蒸汽来产生压力。1945年，另一家意大利公司Gaggia推出了一种新型机械萃取式咖啡机，大幅度简化了其总体构架，通过置入一组弹簧杠杆装置来推动活塞从而产生水压。

These elegant machines were much easier to use than their predecessors and some are still in use today, especially in southern Italy. A few connoisseurs insist that they are superior to rivals, and it is true that in the right hands they can produce a perfectly balanced coffee.

这些设计精巧的咖啡机相比之前的产品使用更加简便，有的甚至现在还在使用，尤其是在意大利南部。一些内行的鉴赏家坚信这些咖啡机相比其同类产品更有优势，这个说法得到了验证，因为它们更有助于制作品质优良口感稳定的咖啡。

A further burst of innovation came in 1961 when Ernesto Valente, yet another pioneering Italian, set out to re-think the design of the espresso machine from first principles. He wanted to replace the spring of the lever machine with an electric-powered rotating pump, but no pump could handle hot water. So Valente decided to compress cold water, which would then pass across a heat exchanger before reaching the ground coffee at the optimum temperature of 90°C. His Faema E61 machine was revolutionary, and the main elements of its design define most espresso machines today.

在1961年，Ernesto Valente——意大利的另一咖啡巨头，带来了一场更具革命性的创新，它试图从意式咖啡机的基本原理着手，重新进行考量设计。Ernesto Valente试图采用电动旋转水泵装置来取代风靡一时的的杠杆式机器，然而不存在耐受沸水的水泵。于是Ernesto Valente决定用冷水替换热水，采用压缩装置使其通过一个热交换装置，在遇到咖啡粉之前到达90°C。旗下Faema E61改头换面，其设计的主要元素为现代多数的咖啡机奠定了基础。

The hard grind

艰巨的研磨

It takes roughly 50 coffee beans to make a single cup of espresso. After roasting and grinding, the coffee weighs around 6.5 grams. A cup of espresso will contain a rich variety of solids, though in minute quantities, whereas a cup of filter coffee contains almost none. But then espresso coffee is full of chemical and olfactory surprises.

一杯意式浓缩需要大概50粒咖啡豆。通过研磨和筛选，咖啡粉的重量大概在6.5g左右。一杯经过过滤制得得咖啡，其咖啡粉颗粒含量微乎其微，而意式浓缩中却包含了丰富的颗粒物质，它所含的化学物质非常丰富，并且给予人无限的惊喜。

One is that it contains less caffeine than almost any other form of prepared coffee. True espresso must be made entirely from arabica beans, which have half the caffeine of the alternative robusta variety. In the making of a perfect espresso, too, the hot water and the coffee combine only briefly—ideally, for 30 seconds. That limits the amount of caffeine that can pass into the water. By contrast, steeped or percolated coffee made with robusta beans is very strong in caffeine.

其一是意式浓缩的咖啡因含量要少于其他任何形式制作的咖啡。真正的意式浓缩采用100%的阿拉比卡咖啡豆，这种豆子的咖啡因含量是另一咖啡品种罗布斯塔的一半。并且，在一份上好的意式浓缩制作过程中，水和咖啡粉之间的融合理论上仅持续简短的30秒。这一过程较好地控制了咖啡因融入水中的数量。因此，若是罗布斯塔的咖啡豆，采用浸泡式或者过滤式，所制作的咖啡其咖啡因含量就相当地高了。

A second surprise is the sheer variety of chemical substances inside a single roasted coffee bean. Scientists reckon there are more than 1,200 of them, of which perhaps 700-800 are volatile compounds responsible for aroma. The espresso process releases more volatiles than other methods of preparation.

另一惊奇之处是它所含的化学物质仅存在于经过烘焙的咖啡豆中。科学家们估计它含有超过1200种物质，其中700~800种为挥发性物质，形成其特有的香气。意式浓缩咖啡相比其它方式制作的咖啡，要释放更多的挥发性物质。

The aroma is a vital part of perfect espresso. “Roughly 70% of what we perceive is aroma,” says Furio Suggi Liverani, director of research at illycaffe, “while the remaining 30% is received by taste receptors on the tongue.” Perfect coffee requires excellent preparation, but it also requires top-quality beans. If just one of the 50 is a dud, then that cup will be perceptibly less than perfect. The roasting must be even, and the grinding process must be finely calibrated so that the resulting coffee allows smooth passage of the hot water that extracts the flavour.

香气是意式浓缩不可或缺的一部分。“我们所感知到的东西70%来自于香气，”illy咖啡的调研主管称，“剩下30%的感知来自于舌尖上的味蕾”。上好的咖啡需要卓越的技术，同时还需要精品的豆子。即使只有50/1是劣质的豆子，那也是害群之马，会使制作出来的咖啡大大掉价。咖啡豆的烘焙亦需要适当，研磨时更需要准确地把握研磨精度以保证萃取时水流可以稳定缓慢地通过。

It has taken manufacturers decades to sort out each element in this exacting process. The biggest challenge remains avoiding dud beans. It is quite normal for a fair quality batch of green coffee (that is, coffee before roasting) to be 1-2% defective. But if two beans in 100 are duds, the chances of a bad espresso are unacceptably high. Few plantations, however, can afford the sophisticated equipment needed to create defect-free supplies. Instead, coffee companies such as illycaffe and Hausbrandt, a rival based in Treviso near Venice, have developed electronic detection systems. These use light waves to scan individual green beans, which are rejected by a puff of air if they show up as defective. Illycaffe's scanners can assess 400 beans every second.

制造商们在这个精确的过程上花了几十年的时间来明确步骤的顺序。、，而最大的挑战是减少劣质咖啡豆的数量。在同一批次的生豆中，正常情况下劣质豆所占比例为1-2%。但是如果100颗豆子中有2颗是坏的，那么所制作的咖啡失败的可能性非常大。然而，几乎没有一个种植园可以供得起尖端设备来创造100%优良品质的供应。反而是像illy咖啡，浩世咖啡之类的大型咖啡公司，威尼斯水城边的特雷维索城中两个竞争对手，拥有发达的电子检测系统。一旦检测出生豆有瑕疵，便会被喷出的气流推回，然后系统便会采用光波对豆子进行扫描。Illy咖啡的扫描系统每秒钟可以对400粒生豆进行检测。

The final hurdle overcome by the manufacturers was the packaging and storage of espresso. Like all coffee, espresso quickly deteriorates in air. Leading companies began to experiment with making air-tight individual doses. A system developed by illycaffe uses paper pods to hold a single dose of coffee. The pods are then packed under pressure using carbon dioxide to seal out damaging oxygen. So technically demanding is the sealing process that the company had to create its own welding expertise—no supplier was up to the task.

制造厂们最后克服的困难是意式浓缩的包装和存放。和其他的咖啡一样，意式咖啡会在空气中迅速变质。咖啡制造巨头开始投资研发真空包装的独立包装。之后成品将在二氧化碳环境下进行真空包装以排出氧气。因此在真空包装过程中技术要求公司必须建立自身的焊接技术——而没有供应商可以承担起这项任务。

By contrast, Nespresso's doses are neat aluminium capsules, also kept under pressure using carbon dioxide. When inserted into the machine, the punctured capsule acts as a membrane, allowing water to flow evenly through. More ingenious still, the capsule itself has been designed to regulate the pressure pushing the water.

Nespresso公司推出了方便使用的咖啡胶囊，同样需要在二氧化碳环境下进行压缩。将咖啡胶囊置入咖啡机，被刺破的胶囊丸作为一层薄膜介质，使水流缓慢均匀通过。值得一提的是，咖啡胶囊本身可以控制压力大小来推动水流。

Quality pays

质量成本

In the past two or three years, the market for espresso coffee has been growing strongly: by more than 10% a year, Nespresso reckons. But “household penetration is low,” says Daniel Lalonde, its commercial director, “so there is enormous future potential.” For instance, 70% of French people drink espresso every day, yet only 10% of French homes boast an espresso machine. Penetration in big markets such as America and Britain is far less, at around 1%.

在过去的两到三年，意式浓缩咖啡的市场不断壮大：Nespresso估计其每年的增长量超过了10%。“意式浓缩在家庭的普及率还是很低，” Nespresso的主管Daniel Lalonde说，“这是一个极具诱惑的潜在市场。”比如，尽管只有10%的家庭拥有引以为傲的咖啡机的情况下，70%的法国人仍然每天都喝意式浓缩。而在美国和英国，只有1%的家庭拥有咖啡机，因此将市场渗透到这两个国家依旧路途漫长。

The context for the growth of espresso is a big shift in the coffee market away from cheap coffee towards specialty products. Amid tales of woe from growers in developing countries, overall coffee prices have declined to record lows during 2001. Observers say a glut of cheap robusta coffee, much of it from Vietnam, which has quickly emerged as a big producer, has been largely to blame.

意式浓缩的成长背景意味着咖啡市场从廉价咖啡豆向精品豆转变的过程。从而导致了发展中国家种植者的悲剧，所有的咖啡豆价格在2001年将到了历史最低点。调研员称供过于求的廉价罗布斯塔咖啡豆大部分产自维也纳，由于它大量种植供应咖啡豆，然而品质却并不让人满意，因此受到了大量的质疑。

The quality end of the market, however, has continued to thrive. Big buyers woo individual coffee growers, paying above-market prices to encourage quality and reliability of supply. They can afford this because margins on drinks like espresso are high. A single capsule of Nespresso contains some six grams of coffee and retails for roughly 28 cents, equivalent to around $46 per kilo. A kilo of fair-quality green coffee costs less than $1.

上层人士停止了廉价咖啡豆的采购，然后廉价咖啡豆的销量依旧巨大。大型采购商们热捧个体咖啡种植者，向他们支付高于市场的价格鼓励种植并提高供应的质量和可靠性。他们愿意支付这个价格因为意式浓缩的高回报率。每份Nespresso胶囊咖啡的重量大约为6g，售价在28美分左右，这意味着每千克咖啡的售价达到了46美元。而市场上这个品质的咖啡生豆每千克的采购成本低于1美元。

So where to go for guaranteed espresso perfection? Having sampled coffee all over Europe, this correspondent finally found perfection where it might be expected to reside: in the Italian home of espresso. In the heart of old Trieste is the Caffe illy, a coffee bar developed as a laboratory. The atmosphere is cosmopolitan, and the espresso is as near perfect as you can hope to find.

因此，去哪里寻找上好的意式浓缩？在到处都是速溶咖啡的欧洲，代理商们最后找到了上好的咖啡也许会寻在于意式浓缩的故乡——意大利。Illy咖啡，位于 Trieste城的中心，像一家咖啡实验室。在这里，你可以感受到世界性的气息，并能享受到你所能遇到的最好的意式浓缩。