How Instagram elevated the coffee machine into a key home design element

In one of his many beautifully shot reels, Instagram influencer Nick Lowry walks into the kitchen of his artfully decorated NYC apartment and switches on his shiny steel coffee machine. This morning, he’s making a cup of Cafe Bombon – “strong coffee served with a bit of condensed milk”, or what we know as Vietnamese coffee.  

In a voiceover, Lowry details the history of the beverage as the video shows him making it: measuring out beans, grinding them with a spritz of water, prepping the portafilter, filling half a clear glass with condensed milk, placing it on the drip tray for its espresso shot, and slowly mixing up a delicious concoction. 

Even as Lowry savours his Cafe Bombon, your eye is drawn to the space within which he’s operating. The machine, a gleaming Rocket Espresso Appartamento, sits on the granite counter in a dedicated corner of his kitchen. The wall above it holds a shelf stacked with boxes of beans, accessories, mugs, next to a framed Matisse poster. 

Lowry’s tiny coffee bar is the product of a pandemic hobby, as he wrote in response to a comment asking if he’d trained as a barista. A cursory glance at Instagram shows that he’s not the only one whose relationship with java has acquired a new depth. There are over 165 million posts on Instagram filed under #coffee; 1.5 million under #coffeebar and 769K under #homebarista.

#coffee

There are recipes and tutorials to save, new gadgets and accessories to be thirsty for, elaborate meticulously-designed to be inspired by and mimic. There are #asmr crossovers which tune you into the sounds of coffee beans clinking in jars, espressos pouring slowly being into glass. There are #restock videos, tying in with a new trend dubbed #pantryporn, pulling you in with their makers’ organisational prowess and aura of abundance.

The pandemic created a new awareness of the spaces that are our homes. As the lines between our exterior and interior lives collapsed, many of us sought to remake the outside world in our private spheres. Our cluttered desktops transformed into islands of productivity, replete with colourful accessories, humidifiers, candles, stationery and art.

We added cushions, throws, rugs to our living rooms to make them cozier. Our home theatres got specced out with the most cutting-edge sound bars and screen. We began to carve out pockets – a corner of the balcony for meditation, a section of the guest room for yoga, a dedicated reading section. When commuting was impossible, we could at least travel within our homes to perform those daily rituals. And few things are as ritualistic as that morning cup of joe.

Two years later, those homes have transformed into the stage on which we orchestrate everyday activities but amplified into something grander with a camera or two watching. This is the Instagram effect: homes, like more social spaces such as restaurants, bars, pubs, cafes, are being designed with an audience in mind. Enter: The home coffee bar.

Personal coffee bar

A DIY coffee bar in homes has been a trending topic in the world of interiors lately. Look at #coffeebar on Instagram: Clearly, where there’s a caff-fiend’s will, there’s a shrine for the go juice. Whether it’s the top of a cabinet in the living room of your matchbox-sized apartment or a column of a wall in the island kitchen of a country farmhouse, there’s a lot of aesthetic appeal in open shelving, a few mismatched mugs, jars for beans or pods, and brewing equipment.

On Instagram, @latte.w.laura posts a coffee how-to every day from her kitchen, a corner of whose marble-top counter is dedicated to coffee – a Nespresso machine, a drawer full of capsules, a tray full of bottles of syrups, creams and sprinkles. Surf through interior designers’ pages – such as @bannerdayinteriors and @marieflanigan – to see the space next to the sink in an island kitchen can be styled to accommodate a coffee bar.

At the centre of a lot of this content is the espresso machine, a gadget that has been evolving for the last 150 years. In 1884, an Italian called Angelo Moriondo invented a model of steam engine intended to improve the extraction of coffee. Over time, innovations such as portafilters, multiple brew heads, steam wands, a lever system and double boilers have further enhanced a device that uses a high-pressure system to produce the purest distillation possible of coffee seeds. 

In the last few decades though, coffee machines – the heaving, hissing gadgets that you’d mostly encounter at cafes, in your office pantry and occasionally, Indian weddings – have evolved into compact, stylish, do-it-all and easy-to-use devices that don’t necessarily need a professional to operate them (or a degree in engineering to understand them).  

From the revolutionary and very accessible Nespresso to the retro-looking drip machines of Smeg, to the high-efficiency sturdiness of Breville’s all-in-one apparatus, there’s a coffee machine for every kind of skill level, taste, and appetite. And once you’ve made that admittedly difficult decision – bean-to-cup or capsule pod? More analogue solutions like a French press or a moka pot? – the internet holds many tips and tricks on how to give it a home worthy of your investment.  

A Wonderchef Regalia Capsule fully automatic is compact enough to place on an old bar cart, along with a tray for creamers, sweeteners and a ribbed glass jar for the capsules. A metallic DeLonghi fully automatic could sit pretty and proud on the granite worktop of a large-ish kitchen, blending in with other metallic appliances; its shrine bedecked with open shelves to show off your ceramic collection. A precious Miele coffee maker deserves its own cabinet – rustic or modern, vintage or farmhouse – with matching accessories and a coffee table recipe book to elevate the look.

India’s coffee culture

It’s a particularly great time to invest in a good espresso machine and build yourself a coffee bar at home – given that the coffee culture in India is also evolving rapidly. The Indian coffee market, according to studies, is expected to reach over $4.2 billion in size by 2025, with out-of-home consumption accounting for only about 20 per cent. To meet that rising demand, apart from the technology, there’s a string of Indian startups offering world-class roasts of Arabica, in the form of bean, pod and ground coffee.

In a predominantly tea-drinking country, coffee has been something of an aspirational beverage, finding great currency among millennials. Indeed, a market survey by Euromonitor in 2019 showed that about 66% of Indian millennials chose coffee as their favourite drink. At least some of this growing love for lattes, macchiatos and cold brews has percolated from a nationwide obsession with the sitcom FRIENDS and their home-away-from-home, a cafe called Central Perk.

But at the end of the day, few things are as ritualistic, personal and mindful as the act of making and consuming a cup of coffee. Not to forget the additional points for your social ledger that would definitely result from using fresh brews to whip up those espresso martinis for your Saturday night at-home dinner parties.

Nidhi Gupta is a Mumbai-based lifestyle writer and editor.