In others, drip devices have been installed, literally dispensing water one drop at a time.
The machines, with names like Home Café, Senseo and Tassimo, will compete against lower-priced automatic-drip devices as well as more expensive machines, typically imported, that specialize in espresso.
And there are the showstoppers, the five Japanese slow-drip devices for iced coffee, each three feet tall — they look like an aristocrat's science experiment, the wood and brass frames supporting a network of glass globes and adjustable nozzles that mete out liquid at 88 drops a minute.
Indeed, Blue Bottle's slow-drip devices for making iced coffee are Japanese-made, and to order the resultant brew one asks for the "Kyoto".
Five minutes after that come the fire-raisers, who light 10km of "fireline" using drip torches (devices that drop flaming paraffin at a constant rate).
Cores were taken from a second 2.5-cm chop using a 25-mm coring device to determine drip loss percentage (DRIP).
The agent for the apartment, Massimiliano, a young man with a cellphone on a chain around his neck, greeted us and showed us around, focusing on the tiny kitchen and its four coffee-making devices: two drip machines (for American coffee, he sniffed), a French press and an Italian stovetop espresso maker.
In brief, samples were diluted in the medium immediately, and then dripped into the test device.
Plants were watered twice daily using an automated irrigation device with individual drip lines.
When the flow control device is opened, retrograde drip infusion of diluted contrast starts.
