Brewing a good cup of joe isn’t hard — all you really need is a way to grind beans, boil water, and filter the the grounds out when you’re done. Brewing a good shot of espresso, however, isn’t quite as easy. If you want to kick up the potency of your brew, you need pressure — and pressure typically requires a whole lot more equipment. Even the most basic espresso maker –the moka pot— requires a stove to work.
But thanks to this stunningly simple contraption called Piamo, you no longer need a stove or bulky countertop machine to make a decent shot of espresso. This badboy lets you pull a shot in around 30 seconds using your microwave.
Coffee connoisseurs will likely scoff at the idea of drinking espresso made in such an unholy fashion, but regardless of how the coffee-snob elite might look at it, Piamo is a pretty brilliant little contraption. It works almost exactly like an inverted moka pot (check out the gif on this wikipedia page if you’re unfamiliar), except it works inside of a microwave instead of on a stovetop.
To use it, you simply fill up the clear reservoir on top with water, put some loose grounds (or a packet) in the middle chamber, and screw it all together. You then set the microwave for 30 seconds, hit go, and watch the magic happen. As the microwaves excite the water molecules in the reservoir, steam pressure begins to build, and pushes hot water through the grounds and into the cup at the bottom. When the 30 seconds is up, just pop off the top and drink — the bottom section is shaped like an espresso cup, so you don’t even have to pour anything before you can enjoy the brew.
The device isn’t quite available for purchase just yet, but its creators wrapped up a crowdfunding campaign on StartNext (the German equivalent of Kickstarter) a little over a year ago, so the design is finished and the company is poised to release the first production models sometime later this year. We’ll keep you posted on availability, but in the meantime you can find out more on the Piamo product page.
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