Barista In A Box: What If Your Microwave Brewed Your Morning Espresso?
If you ask us, there's no fast enough way to get our morning caffeine — though there's a hard stop at instant coffee grinds with their questionable, dehydrated crystals. But thanks to this new design prototype, you may be able to have a legit shot of morning espresso in as little as 30 seconds.
The Piamo espresso-maker is the brainchild of Christoph Meyl, a German designer and self-admitted coffee fiend who devoted years to researching and developing a microwaveable brewer that would save him the time-consuming walks down to the nearest espresso machine. What he came up with was a compact, four-piece vessel that relies on the pressure generated by heating water to force it down through an espresso-filled filter (grinds or single-serve pads) into a bottom cup.
While the very notion of a microwaveable espresso brewer might seem almost blasphemous to some staunch, old-school-method baristas, the Piamo's process is actually similar to that of a stovetop espresso-maker, only faster and with the water flowing in reverse. Rather than investing in a newfangled machine, it's definitely a clever way to maximize the use of something most of us already own.
Meyl's design currently exists in prototype form, however he's seeking crowdsourced funding via StartNext.
The Piamo consists of just four parts: a bottom cup, a filter inlay, a filter cap, and a water chamber. [/caption]
