COFFEE APPARATUS. Considerable ingenuity has been displayed in devising ap paratus for preparing coffee for the table. The ordinary coffee pot is the plainest and simplest of all; there is no contrivance for filtering the coffee. In Dresden and other parts of G many, a thick piece of flannel or some other woven material, is laid in a funnel ; the ground coffee is placed on the flannel ; and the boiling water filters through the coffee, the flannel, and the funnel, to a vessel below—carrying with it the flavour of the coffee without the grounds or sediment.
Platow's Automaton Coffee Pot has for its object to melee coffee in less time and in a better manner than by the ordinary method. The machine consists of of two parts. There is at the top a glass vase which screws off and on by means of wooden handles, and is fur nished with a long narrow straight tube, re sembling the pipe of a common funnel, and reaching nearly to the bottom of a metallic urn placed beneath the vase. Boiling water is poured into the vase in quantity sufficient for the coffee to be made ; and this is allowed to descend into the urn. The ground coffee is then placed within the vase, on a small per forated silver plate. A lamp containing spirit or naphtha is placed beneath the urn; and in a short time the peculiar action of the appar atus developes• itself. The steam formed on the surface of the water in the urn forces, by its elasticity, the water up the tube into the Iglass vase ; where it acts upon the coffee in the usual way for extracting the qualities of the berry. When the coffee is so far prepared and is required to be fined, the lamp is re moved, the formation of steam ceases, a partial vacuum is formed in the urn, and the external atmosphere, pressing on the open vase, presses or strains the coffee, first through the grounds and then through the perforated silver plate; so that it trickles into the urn in the state of a pure bright decoction. It is thus seen that the liquid makes two descents and one ascent between the vase and the urn, during the pro.
cess. In a cheaper form of the apparatus, a common fire or a lamp is used instead of a spirit lamp.
A coffee pot of rather complicated structure was patented by Mr. Andrews of Wolverhamp ton in 1842. This coffee-pot had no less an adjunct than a small forcing-pump, placed near the handle. The boiling water was poured in the forcing-pump, while the ground coffee was put in a perforated vessel in the middle of the coffee-pot ; and the hot water, being forced by the pump, was made to satu rate the ground coffee in a way which (we presume) was supposed to produce a result adequate to the costliness of the apparatus.
Waller's Coffee Pot, patented in 1847, differs in many particulars from all the others. A horizontal partition, perforated near the centre with fine holes, divides the vessel into two equal chambers ; an open pipe leads nearly from the top of the upper chamber to near the bottom of the lower chamber ; and another pipe leads from the perforations some way down the lower chamber, with a tap or cock which can be worked by a handle protruding through the side of the coffee-pot. The requi site quantity of water, either hot or cold, is poured into the upper chamber, and allowed to flow through the perforations and small pipe into the lower chamber ; the ground coffee is placed on the perforated plate; the spout is closed with a cork or plug ; and the vessel is placed on the fire. As the water be comes heated, the steam generated has no outlet upwards or sideways, and it therefore presses on the water, and forces it up the long pipe, whence it falls into the upper chamber, upon the ground coffee. When all the water is thus forced up, the coffee-pot is removed from the fire, the vacuum in the lower chamber is condensed, the plug is removed from the spout, the top of the short pipe is opened, and the water trickles through the ground coffee and through the perforations into the lower vessel, imbibing all the soluble and aromatic proper lies of the coffee as it descends.