How tough was it to find quality espresso 30 years ago?

Want to talk espresso but not sure which forum? If so, this is the right one.
Seed65
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#1: Post by Seed65 »

I am a relative newbie to the world of espresso making and have read tons of info on what is needed to pull a great shot. It is tough! I have the basic equipment...more or less...and am grateful in having this in my home. I feel sure that 30 years ago people had to seek quality espresso in restaurants and limited coffee shops and most did not have the means to make it at home.

So....What did espresso taste like 30 years ago when all this fancy equipment that we now have...auto/semi auto espresso makers..highly adjustable electric grinders ...etc...did not exist??? I still get crappy shots from cafes/shops that have all kinds of fancy equipment today...and I imagine it was tough finding shops and restaurants that could pull great shots back 30 years ago, which only had the basic equipment. A skilled barista must have been few and far between and espresso must have tasted like crap by today's standards in most instances.

Or perhaps our tastes been refined and our level of acceptable quality increased with the advent of all this fancy equipment? Something that was found to be acceptable 30 years ago would not be acceptable now? Or perhaps the majority of people of today don't know or care how their shots taste??

Thoughts?

Alan Frew
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#2: Post by Alan Frew »

You should remember that some of the people who might be interested in replying weren't alive 30 years ago. The ones that were, if they had never travelled outside the USA, had never tasted "decent" espresso, let alone "quality" espresso. Back then, if you wanted a reliable remotely drinkable espresso, your choices were Italy or Melbourne, Australia. And Melbourne was limited to Lygon St. Carlton, and maybe a dozen other places where post WW2 immigrants had set up coffee or restaurant businesses.

I'm sure that the diaspora of Italian immigrants after WW2 resulted in decent espresso venues worldwide, but most of them lacked either quality sources of beans or equipment suppliers. In the USA coffee came in cans and was primarily brewed by percolators or drip filters. Instant coffee outsold whole bean or preground coffee by a large margin.

So, to rank it in order of difficulty, best to worst,

Italy Easy
Rest of Europe Sporadic, depended on "little Italy" areas
Central & S.America Sometimes
Melb. Australia One street
USA Impossible but miracles happened
Asia & World Fuggedaboutit!

Alan

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Marcelnl
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#3: Post by Marcelnl »

Being old enough to have drum coffee and espresso thirty years ago I can only say that Italy was your best bet for Europe, in the Netherlands I recall a few chance encounters with what I'd may have resembled something I would now consider poor espresso at best.
In those days the Netherlands was used to drink the strongest drip coffee among western Europe ( UK folks typically made a watery tea like dilution of instant), think Turkey might have had decent coffee but no real espresso. I do recall some coffee roasters here and there in cities highstreets, all dedicated to regular coffees and at quite dark roast level.all but a few have gone since the late seventies..the few remaining ones I consider no better than in those days, when compared to my current standards.
I did have a go at espresso in the mid eighties, but knowing what I know know that was bound for disaster from the start....(preground coarse stale coffee and a krups w pressurized basket) the result was as horrible as it sounds and the equipment was decommissioned quickly...
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Balthazar_B
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#4: Post by Balthazar_B »

In Italy, of course, but thirty years ago you could get good espresso in the San Francisco Bay Area, not least because a lot of Italian expats lived there, and there had been a cafe culture in place for a long time (sounds like Melbourne had some of the same advantages). However, it would be fair to say espresso was definitely more hit-or-miss, not least because it was considered more of a cool art form than the science it has become, where metrics, process, and consistency rule all.
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yakster
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#5: Post by yakster »

Seed65 wrote:What did espresso taste like 30 years ago when all this fancy equipment that we now have...auto/semi auto espresso makers..highly adjustable electric grinders ...etc...did not exist???
Since there's many members pulling great espresso with vintage machines (often levers) and grinders, I'd say that the equipment was not so much a limiting factor. I'd say that good grinders and espresso machines with pre-infusion and maybe even pressure profiling become more important now with lighter roasts, but pre-infusion and pressure profiling is possible with vintage levers. I think that the quality of the coffee available has improved and we're seeing less and less robusta in espresso blends but I'm happy to say that I'm starting to find good coffee and espresso in the wild at more and more places in California these days. I can't speak from personal experience, as I wasn't drinking espresso 30 years ago (just coffee) but my 1950's Faema Faemina lever espresso machine does just fine.
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bluesman
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#6: Post by bluesman »

It was almost impossible unless you lived near a shop or had your own equipment. My sister went away to college in 1957 & discovered espresso in NYC. When I visited her, she & her friends took me to what were called "coffee houses" on the Barnard/Columbia campus, around Washington Square, in the Village etc. The only name I remember is Cafe Reggio (still open), but there were several with live music as well as good espresso. So I started looking for espresso when I was in junior high. It was a tough quest for the next 35+ years.

She brought a Moka pot home, but the coffee wasn't magical. So I tried "espresso" everywhere it was offered. Most was probably perked, dripped or brewed Medaglia D'oro "espresso blend" because that's what was available. But coffee houses had almost disappeared in the late '60s & early '70s in favor of psychedelia & the inhalational drug culture. Only the oldies stayed around - we first visited Cafe Trieste in 1974 and loved the vibe as much as the coffee. And San Francisco had a few really good places for espresso - but restaurants were not among them. We ate at the Carnelian Room on that '74 trip, & even their coffees were just average. When the first pods came out, more restaurants started offering espresso, but it wasn't good.

I got my first "real" machine in the early '80s when we moved into our house - it was a revelation! Good equipment, local roasters, and growing consumer interest made it easier by the mid '90s, but it's really only been a decade+ that you could get good commercial espresso in many cities across the US, in my experience. I can't believe I drank so much swill just because it was the only show in town. I should have waited until we got home.

Nick Name
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#7: Post by Nick Name »

At first, we need to define what a "quality espresso" is...?

The espresso, as I enjoy it nowadays, did not exist 30 years ago. Thus the concept of '3rd wave coffee'.
But 30 years ago, I enjoyed espresso as it was... :)

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Marshall
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#8: Post by Marshall »

Balthazar_B wrote:In Italy, of course, but thirty years ago you could get good espresso in the San Francisco Bay Area, not least because a lot of Italian expats lived there, and there had been a cafe culture in place for a long time (sounds like Melbourne had some of the same advantages). However, it would be fair to say espresso was definitely more hit-or-miss, not least because it was considered more of a cool art form than the science it has become, where metrics, process, and consistency rule all.
I discovered espresso as a Berkeley student in the late 60's to early 70's. The campus was surrounded by coffee shops, one of which, Caffe Mediterranean, claimed to have invented the caffe latte. My normal routine included getting a cappuccino on the way to and from class. I thought it was great. The fact I always had my espresso with sugar and foamed milk should have tipped me that I was remembering the coffee through the hazy, rosy view of nostalgia.

Years later (around 2003), when I knew better, I was in town and did a round of the shops around campus. They were almost uniformly awful. The only saving grace was that Caffe Med had recently started getting its coffee from Barefoot, which had also trained them. So, their espresso was passable. Around the same time I also tried the "Little Italy's" of San Francisco, New York and Boston, which were equally awful. They just had much prettier espresso machines.

My entry to "good" espresso was at Dick Healy's The Coffee Roaster in my home neighborhood of Sherman Oaks in the mid-90's. Dick was mentor to several L.A. micro roasters and pulled his shots from a lever machine. He offered espresso blends that he roasted in his interpretations of Northern, Central and Southern Italian styles (light to dark), but he left out the robusta. Dick became my coffee mentor and introduced me to coffees from La Minita and the Gayo Mountain Cooperative. This was when "single origin" on a coffee shop's list meant Kenya AA and Colombia Supremo, beans sold for their size more than their quality.
Marshall
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bluesman
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#9: Post by bluesman »

Nick Name wrote:At first, we need to define what a "quality espresso" is...?
I wouldn't even consider quality - it was very hard to find any real espresso (i.e. made by pressurized extraction), except in cities with serious intellectual and/or culinary communities. University towns had it by the '60s - we lived on it in Cambridge (MA), my sister had it in NYC, etc. I'm sure there were espresso machines in Ann Arbor, Palo Alto, etc. Quality varied, but most beat a Moka pot or brewed Medaglia D'oro by a mile because those who cared enough to secure a machine & learn how to use it cared about how good their espresso was.

Pods made bad espresso widely available. Nespresso came along in the late '80s with a decent capsule system, but I think the first Illy ESE pods came out a decade before, and the few I tried were not very good. My first two machines at home came with a pod PF in addition to the regular one, but I couldn't get good results.....and I drove my wife nuts finding good fresh pods for it. Most restaurants made awful espresso with pod machines (and still do).

So there was a fair amount of bad espresso in the US 25 to 30 years ago, but much less that most on this forum would order again (a functional definition of quality that seems to work here).

Nick Name
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#10: Post by Nick Name »

Good quality, for me means also good, thoroughly sourced beans and an appropriate roast. If there was a place you could have had some Esmeralda's Geishas way back then, at least I wasn't aware of it (or any "espresso" beans less than full city roast).... :lol:

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