Unsung icons: Coffee makers Join us for a cup of joe
COMEDIAN DAVID SMIEDT TAKES AN IRREVERENT, BUT APPRECIATIVE, LOOK AT THE CLASSIC THINGS THAT DEFINE YOU-BEAUT AUSSIE LIFE
FOR THE FIRST two-thirds of Australia’s colonial existence, few items tethered us to the motherland like tea. It was as if we could literally ingest Britain, so much so that in many parts of the country the word came to signify not just the beverage but an entire meal. As in: “A roast and two veg is me favourite tea.”
Then, three things happened. In 1928, Australia’s first commercial espresso machine was installed at Cafe Florentine in Melbourne; then, after World War II, coffee import controls were relaxed; and later still, from the 1950s, successive waves of Italian and Greek immigrants brought their caffeinated habits to our shores. Flavour aside, java sharpened our focus and jump-started our hearts in a way Lady and Earl Grey never could. It was new. It was different. It was that chicest of all middle-class aspirations: continental!
This burgeoning taste for a good cup of Joe neatly coincided with the expansion of Australian suburbia. As we moved further away from the industrialised inner cities, the local Italian cafe was no longer just a leisurely stroll away. So coffee became a domestic affair – one that had the dedicated hardware to boot.
The earliest and simplest home coffee maker was also the sexiest. Known as the moka pot, it was made of cast iron, sat on the stovetop and brewed pungent ‘expressos’ – we were only just getting used to the lingo – by passing water pressurised by steam through ground coffee. The most famous variety, patented by the Italian firm Bialetti in 1933, featured an octagonal base, a cinched mid-section and then a cantilevered top half. It was Sophia Loren rendered in metal. And just like the Roman screen goddess, it kept us up nights.
As is the way with gadgetry, convenience soon trumped elegance, and by the 1970s we loved not only saying the word ‘percolator’ but also investing in it. Essentially a set-and-forget device that theoretically kept fresh coffee brewing all day, it looked like an electric Thermos, but from hour four onwards dispensed beverages that were more bitter than your average Hollywood divorce.
Glass that had been treated to withstand heat was the next major advance on the coffee front, and gave rise to snazzy terms such as ‘drip-o-lator’. This used paper filters to separate grounds from the coffee, which steadily plunked into what looked like a bloated water jug atop a heated base. The results were nowhere near cafe standard, but nothing really was back then. Until, that is, the French press, which sounds like a wrestling move but is not.
Bodum was (and still is) the king of this genre – so much so that its name virtually became synonymous with the item itself, like Panadol but more fun after dinner. Few homes in Australia were without one of these glass cylinders. You simply added a spoonful from the vacuum-packed coffee brick, topped it up with boiling water, and pushed downwards so a finely meshed sieve compacted the grounds into a fragrant sludge at the bottom. The savvy added this to their gardens while the rest of us blithely washed it down the sink, unaware of the environmental consequences or the fact that we were caffeinating our sealife to such a degree it should have taken five minutes tops to find Nemo. Traditionalists still veer towards the Bialettis and Bodums, especially since the choice of specialty blends has expanded to the point where your singleorigin Kenyan mountain blend is as commonplace at contemporary supermarkets as checkouts where you have to do all the work.
Of course, increasingly affordable, pod-chomping, high-tech machines have narrowed the gap between kitchen and cafe. But for the first few generations of Australian domestic coffee fans, these are merely the next step in a woke journey that began at about the same time rock’n’roll was born. Okay, so we latched on decades later than many regions, but when we did, it was bloody enthusiastic. And, like they say, better latte than never.
THE earliest MACHINES LOOKED LIKE SOPHIA LOREN RENDERED IN METAL; LIKE THE ROMAN SCREEN GODDESS, THEY kept us up NIGHTS