Just when you think they’ve created every conceivable way of making a cup of coffee — French press, cold brew, vitamin-infused, multi infusions, IoT-enabled — along comes a new gadget to remind you that, nope! As long as there are coffeeheads around the world, there will be people working to invent new techniques to extract even more nuance and flavor from every last drop of the good stuff.
Out of Colombia comes the FrankOne, a new brewing system that uses “vacuum extraction technology” to create their espresso-like coffee. It’s a small electric device which sits on an accompanying carafe. Put your coffee grounds in the top, pour hot water over them, and then push a button to fire up FrankOne’s electric system. It creates a vacuum in the chamber to pull the water through the grinds and into the vessel.
Eduardo Umaña, the man behind the FrankOne, told me via email that “Essentially the air from the glass carafe is removed and a vacuum forms, [which] forces the water in the top container to filter at a pressure through a coffee bed. This is the reason why you can make a beverage pretty similar to an espresso, the vacuum is quite strong and forces the water through finely ground coffee.”
Umaña went on to say that with this method, the coffee grounds form a natural filter that strains out the crema (the tan, foamy layer on top of an espresso), which is quite bitter due to carbon dioxide degassing. The result is a much sweeter cup of coffee.
There are other vacuum coffee makers on the market, but the FrankOne appears to be smaller and less complicated.
Umaña was going to launch a Kickstarter campaign this week to fund the FrankOne, but decided to postpone it until September. In an email exchange, he wrote: “We are actually going ahead with manufacturing right now, this way we can be super sure we deliver to our backers on time and we don’t have them waiting too long. Also, the world seems to be busy for the next month watching the world cup… ”
I haven’t used it so I don’t know if the FrankOne will deliver on its caffeinated promise, but a crowdfunding campaign that proactively takes steps to make sure its backers get the product? Now that is pretty sweet.
We need a cheap alternative to the $20 000 espresso machine method of making a fine espresso. I doubt that this will be it but we’ll find it!