We interview Stephen of MyPressi!
Of the handful of coffee culture mountaineers that have scaled the Everest of caffeinated engineering ingenuity – among them Luigi Bezzera creator of the world’s first “espresso” machine… Dr. Ernest Illy inventor of the first automatic espresso machine in 1933 and Italy’s own Achilles Gaggia creator of the modern pump driven espresso machine in 1946… Very few of these folks live or have lived in the late 20th and early part of the 21st Century.
Among those imagination rich folks are Alan Adler, creator of the Aeropress, Craig Hiron, tenacious entrepreneur who put it all on the line for the OTTO Espresso maker and last (but not least) Stephen O’Brien of the not-yet-World-famous MyPressi Twist espresso maker.
The “just-turned-40” Stephen, who lives in California, is just the latest in the rare circle of coffee and espresso loving folks that have scaled this rarely climbed mountain of ingenuity – the addition of one more amazing espresso producing product in the history books.
And no stranger to doing things differently and with flourish, Stephen claims to jump from one thing to another – having authored 27 books on the subject of software development and software aided publishing.
Raised in Melbourne, Australia and having left home at the gentle age of 16, Stephen learned to conquer the obstacles of life with his own devices and a tireless and quirky sense of creativity. His brain wave in the Espresso world came after only truly embracing coffee culture for a few years. While on his honeymoon in Bora Bora, Tahiti and after several truly bad espresso at the Island resort, Stephen and his new wife conceptualized the idea of a completely portable espresso system using the tiny nitrous oxide cartridges most widely recognized for whipped cream dispensers.
He forgot about it for a while, was reminded about it again by his wife and after a period of about 18 months looking for the right engineering team (in this case from California) came up with a winning product.
Stephen and the MyPressi crew sent me a sample of the Twist to use and abuse. We review it over here on the Coffeecrew.com website.
We interviewed Stephen today via Skype – if you cannot see the audio thingie below, click here for the mp3.