Usa vs Italy: the war of Espresso machines

Italy and the U.S.A are two of the most important countries for number of Espresso machine manufacturers. Italy is leader in Europe with about 40 big companies and, in America, the USA is one of the main market with about 10 big manufacturers.

Professional espresso coffee machines can be split into:

• Traditional espresso coffee machines
  • Require a trained barista;
  • Require the operator to grind coffee, then tamp, load, brew coffee and eject spunk;
  • These can be either manual, semi-automatic or fully automatic, depending on how the water is delivered (manual machines, use a manual lever to deliver water and are very uncommon, semi-automatic machines use a pump but the user controls this with a switch, automatic machines use a pump as well but the water volume and brew time are automated).
• Fully-Automatic / Super Automatic Espresso Machines
  • These are bean to cup machines;
  • They do all of the grind, dose, tamp, brew and ejection of punk automatically;
  • They can be either 1-step (which also steam the milk) or they can be 2-step (which require the barista to steam the milk).