October 28, 2008
  
 
Espresso or caffè espresso (often mispronounced as: expresso) is a concentrated coffee beverage brewed by forcing very hot water under high pressure through coffee that has been ground to a consistency between extremely fine and powder. Espresso was developed in Milan, Italy in the early 20th century, but up until the mid-1940s it was a beverage produced solely with steam pressure. The invention of the spring piston lever machine and its subsequent commercial success changed espresso into the beverage as it is known today. Espresso is now produced with 0.82–1.8 MPa of pressure.