The foam in question was the bubbly top to a frigid espresso martini I'd just made in my home kitchen. And the 'situation' was that there was a lot of it. The cocktail brimmed with satisfying crema as thick as the head on a Guinness'leading to kind words from an esteemed cocktail pro of my acquaintance. Espresso, by definition, requires heat and high pressure to make. But the espresso in my martini was instead a novel substance called cold-brew espresso, made by an innovative new device called The Cumulus Machine that is certainly the most talked-about cold-brew machine in recent memory. The dedicated cold-brew machine, which retails for a heady $700, was created by some big names in coffee. Mesh Gelman, former innovation head at Starbucks, spearheaded the thing. Howard Schultz, Starbucks' erstwhile CEO, helped fund it. The Cumulus promises a unicorn. Perhaps miraculously, the device makes genuine cold brew'not just iced coffee in disguise'within about a minute, in a somewhat...
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