For many people (if you are reading this, you are probably one of them), making coffee is not a chore one undertakes out of necessity. It’s a daily ritual one relishes the opportunity to be a part of. The quality of the experience isn’t judged by the result in the cup—though a delicious coffee at the end never hurts. For me it’s making a Chemex in the morning. No, the Chemex isn’t the most forgiving of brewing devices—as the flat-bottom crumbums relish in bringing up whenever the opportunity arises—but it’s what I started making coffee on all those years ago; miraculously I still have my very first Chemex, still intact.
For the coffee ritualist, the form of the equipment can be just as important as the function (I may have recently purchased an Origami Dripper based on this premise alone). I mean, as truly fantastic as the Acaia Pearl scale and Fellow Stagg kettle are, they probably wouldn’t have quite the industry-wide impact they do were they to lack their aesthetic appeal. You brew with your eyes first.
Enter Sinonimo, a San Francisco-based design firm looking to find the sweet spot between form and function with the Sinonimo Essentials espresso kit.
Released publicly last week, the Essentials kit includes everything you need to get the espresso from the hopper to the portafilter. Along with an oak-handled 58mm tamper, the Sinonimo includes a a funnel, tamp station, knock box, and knock box cover. The entire set is made of oak, cork, stainless steel, and aluminum, and when not in use, all pieces of the Essentials kit nest together to become “part of your environment,” as Sinonimo describes.
Like many creators the idea came about with our frustration and need. While both of us [co-founders Emma Tian and Ximena Lauga] were in search for some good tools/accessories such as grinder, tamper, tamp station, knock-box and cleaning brush for our studio and home espresso machines, we realized we could not find any collection of items that were a good balance between function, experience and appearances.
Per Sinonimo, each Essentials set requires of a total of 79 steps over the course of a four-hour period to produce by craftspeople who have been h20oning their trade for decades, some even a half-century. The result is a collection of beautifully refined espresso gear.
The Sinonimo Essentials set retails for $199.95 and is available via their official website, where you will be required to request an “invite”, which essentially amounts to the company wanting to make sure that your espresso setup is compatible with the Essentials kit. For more information, visit Sinonimo’s official website.
Zac Cadwalader is the managing editor at Sprudge Media Network and a staff writer based in Dallas. Read more Zac Cadwalader on Sprudge.
Top image via Sinonimo