years. The first methods of brewing coffee were pretty crude but they have
advanced greatly over the centuries. People used to just chew the cherry that
came off the coffee tree to get a stimulant effect. Inside the cherry was the
coffee bean. Over time with experimentation, people started to roast and then
grind the beans for better flavour. As early as the the late 1700s, coffee
makers began showing up. This made it easy for people to brew coffee and not
worry about getting grounds in their cup. This was expensive and not many
people had them. The basic design is similar to coffee pots of today. There
was a pot on the bottom with a place to put your ground coffee on the top. This
was connected to a chamber on top where you poured in your boiling water.
People tried many different types of coffee maker throughout the years since
then. There have been percolators, vacuum coffee makers, and drip coffee
makers. Percolators use a pot over a heat source that forces the water into an
upper chamber where the coffee grounds are. The water drips through the coffee
and back into the lower pot. You know it is ready when it stops making
percolating noises which are easy to hear. Then you remove it from heat before
it boils. Vacuum coffee makers use what looks like two pots, one upside down on
the other. As it is heated, the pressure forces hot water up into the top
chamber where it infuses with the ground coffee. When you remove it from heat,
the pressure is reversed and the coffee goes back to the lower pot ready to
drink. Drip coffee makers are the kind we are all used to. Whether automatic
or manual they work by dumping hot water over coffee grounds that sit in a
filter. It strains through into a pot and is ready to drink.With the advent of
electricity, coffee makers became very popular and a little cheaper. In the
early 1900s coffee makers really started to boom and by the 1970s almost
everyone had a coffee maker in their home. These were usually of the automatic
drip variety as they were the easiest to use. Todays coffee makers have many
features. They have timers that allow you to specify when you want your coffee
maker to turn on, have built in grinders, storage areas, and much more. You can
buy home espresso and cappuccino machines also. Coffee makers today range from
the single cup variety to commercial units that make gallons at a time so no
matter what your need, you can usually find it.As more and more people start to
enjoy different kinds of coffee, coffee makers become easier to use and offer
more features. Many combine espresso, cappuccino, and coffee all in one machine
but it is rather bulky still. Look for these to shrink in the near future.