Barista Magazine is your home for the worldwide community of coffee and the people who make it.
Issue link: http://baristamagazine.epubxp.com/i/178542
Lauro is always at the coffee parties and gatherings, as well. He can usually be found engaged in conversation with baristas who adore him, not only for his extraordinary intellect, but also for his geniality and graciousness. Sarah Allen: Let's talk about your childhood—where you grew up, and the kind of boy you were. Lauro Fioretti: I was born in a little town called Mogliano not so far from the Nuova Simonelli factory. My father was working in a building construction company and my mother was taking care of us—me, my two bothers, and my sister—and the small farm (3 hectares) on which we were living. We cultivated olive trees, wine trees (Verdicchio), wheat, corn, and more. As a child, I was very good at school in all disciplines, even if I didn't study so much. I was spending mostly of the time playing outside with my friends. I started to [use the] gym for aerobics and bodybuilding at the age of 14, and I continued for all of secondary school and university. I also participated in running and jumping competitions at regional levels during my primary school, but then I stopped and focus more on studies. But I always kept on with my [workouts]. I always travel with my gym pack and try to keep my body in shape. SA: Do you remember what coffee was like in your house growing up? LF: I definitely remember how the coffee was in my house. I remember that when I was a kid, coffee was reserved for adults, like wine or beer, so for me it was really exciting to have the possibility to enter in this world when I was 12. I remember that at the beginning I found the coffee was strong and bitter compared to the other beverages I was drinking, so it took me some time to get adapted to this strong taste, but for some reason this black hot beverage was fascinating me and I never stop drinking coffee from that time. In my house the coffee was prepared with a moka, then I had biscuits homemade from my mother and fresh fruits coming from our field. I still have in my memory a lot of flavors, smells, coming from the fruits we were cultivating at that time and that sometimes comes up in some delicious cups of coffee I'm tasting now. A big part of the flavor memories I have in my mind still come from this period of my life. I started to drink espresso from the coffee shops of my town [as a teenager] and then in the town [where I was in university, Ancona]. I bought the first espresso coffee machine and my first grinder in 1995 when I started to work with Nuova Simonelli. SA: What did you study in university? LF: I attended the automatic engineering [program at the] University in Ancona, and I made my thesis of degree on a mathematical model that simulates the blood pressure curve on people with a risk of [high] cholesterol through a very low-invasive method. I did a publication in computer's cardiology and a seminar in London in 1993, and then a publication in the American Journal of Physiology in 1994. SA: Please tell me about how you came to work for Nuova Simonelli. 82 barista magazine LF: I get bored if I spend too much time in the lab, so I decided to find a job that gave me the chance to travel and be in contact with people and use my engineering expertise at the same time. Nuova Simonelli was looking for an engineer to train the technicians in their dealers' network and this was my starting point. At the beginning, I found the espresso coffee machine was a very simple [piece of] equipment compared to ones I was dealing before [in my previous job working for an electrical company producing high-voltage switch gears for the public distribution of electricity], but then I discovered that the more I was learning about coffee, more I need to learn. It was like I was opening a new door and I found many other doors to be opened and more questions. After 18 years, I'm still learning a lot and I feel we still need to investigate more in many fields. What is really interesting in this job is that coffee machines are equipment used to extract from the ground coffee several compounds that, combined together in the right proportion, create a profile. The amount of compounds we can extract and their combination and creation of new profiles is something that is always surprising to me every time I taste a new coffee. Working with coffee professionals I realized that coffee is a very complex world and every single step of the coffee chain has a big impact on the coffee cup. Sometime I get frustrated because I [spend] hours and hours trying to set up the coffee machine and the grinder to get the best coffee profile, but for some reason the coffee does not react as I expected it to from previous experiences. This is an important lesson for me: Every coffee is different and you have to start from the beginning to discover it without assumptions. I also learned that the difference in the culture of the people make a great difference in the way we perceive the same coffee, and there is not one truth but just different opinions according to our background. SA: What can you tell us about the new machine that Nuova Simonelli will be unveiling at HOST? LF: The new machine will incorporate all the technologies we have developed, from fine control of the brewing temperature, to a high-efficiency energy system to reduce the energy consumption, with new technologies to achieve new targets required by professional baristas. The new machine will also have a new design developed for the specialty-coffee industry. I contributed in this project giving all the feedback I received from [people in] the specialty-coffee industry and trying to apply them to the new equipment. I also tested all the new features of the machine personally and with a selected panel of baristas. SA: What are some misconceptions people have about coffee equipment and its build out? LF: Sometimes I find people tend to compare different coffee machines with simple data such as temperature, for example, without understanding that every coffee machine has a different behavior that depends on many other project variables. You can set up two different models of coffee machines at the same temperature, using the same amount of coffee, and have a very different profile in the cup because the two machines brew the espresso in different ways, extracting different compounds and