FRANKFURT (dpa) – Coffee in Germany is no longer just served in china cups with a big slice of Black Forest gateau. Fashionable Italian-American coffee shops now offer espresso, cappuccino, café au lait, macchiatto or iced coffee.
And the porcelain and coffee machine manufacturers are responding with fashionable new crockery and many more accessories.
People take their coffee a lot more seriously than they used to, says Elke Fierenz, a spokesman for the Italian company Alessi Germany. “You will hardly find a café now than does not offer espresso and all the rest of it,” she said.
At home, too, consumers are no longer content with simple coffee filters and are splashing out on more elaborate machines. Alessi has reacted with the “Coban Nespresso System, developed by designer Richard Sapper. It offers always-fresh coffee with minimum mess.
“The coffee is vacuum packed in little capsules and simply inserted into the machine,” says Fierenz. The membrane of the capsule is pierced and hot steam is forced through it. New coffee capsules are ordered through a special telephone hotline at cooperating partner Nespresso, a subsidiary of the food giant Nestle.
The German kitchen implement and porcelain manufacturer WMF has opted for classicism rather than high-tech: a stainless steel espresso machine that is simply placed on the hob.
It comes with matching stainless steel thermo-cups that you can make “to-go” thanks to a plastic lid.
Another design classic is “Santo”, first launched by Danish designer Peter Bodrum in 1958, which also uses the vacuum principle.
Water is heated in a lower glass bulb with the help of a spirit stove to over 90 degrees C. At this point it rises through a pipe into an upper glass bulb where it mixes with the ground coffee beans. After a few minutes, the coffee percolates, ready to serve, back into the lower bulb.
The latest coffee makers use the same principle, but they have added many more technical details. One machine made by Bodrum has an integrated digital clock so that the coffee-making process can be programmed up to 24 hours in advance. The fully automatic process has a safety switch and a hotplate to keep the coffee warm.
Melitta has also learned that design is just as important as aroma. In the past its coffee machines usually came in while or beige plastic. Today it offers luxury models in stainless steel, ethnic look machines, and small models for the single household.
It has also launched matching crockery sets called the “M Collection”, including espresso sets, latte macchiatto glasses and cappuccino cups.
The new breakfast collection “b-free” by German porcelain and glass manufacturer Leonardo combines glass, ceramics and plastic
Artist Kathrin Gruenke has added an erotic touch to a new collection of coffee cups for SKV Arzberg Porcelain. The cups and mugs portray a young woman with nothing to hide accompanied by cats, foxes, birds or fish.
Meanwhile, fellow ceramics designer Rosenthal is also taking an artistic route: it is using well-known motifs by U.S. artist Andy Warhol for its latest Studioline collection on coffee, espresso and cappuccino cups.
