Barista Magazine is your home for the worldwide community of coffee and the people who make it.
Issue link: http://baristamagazine.epubxp.com/i/316287
F or something that only has two ingredients, coffee is tre- mendously complicated: There are myriad variables that affect the way those ingredients interplay—from the cof- fee's grind-particle size to the water's temperature, to the amount of contact time involved, style of filtration, etc.—and a slight misstep in any one of them during the brewing process can result in some pretty awful flavors. In order to be truly top-notch, a barista needs to keep all of these variables in the back of her mind, and she must understand the im- pact made by any changes she implements from one batch to anoth- er; she's also got to be expert at tasting and troubleshooting when a cup reflects strength and/or extraction miscalibration. Even the best barista, however, can't go it alone behind the bar: There needs to be tools at the ready to help her do the work of combining this beautiful, freshly ground coffee and crystal-clear hot water. Even so, within the specialty-coffee industry we're often split on coffee machines. As craftspeople who place great emphasis on hu- man skill and aptitude, we might thumb our noses at brewers that need to be plugged in, powered up, or plumbed; as coffee obsessives who tend to have a little geek streak, however, we're also prone to ogle the curves of a beautiful new piece of equipment, and we always want to understand what makes it tick. There's one thing we can all probably agree on, however, and that's the fact that not all tools are created equal—and if we have to use them, we only want the best of the best. We also want to know there is always something better in development, and we want to see innovation, experimentation, and improvement all the time. There's no better person to ask what his ideal machine would do than World Brewers Cup Champion Erin McCarthy, who knows a thing or two about making delicious coffee both with and with- out push-button technology. "What I look for in a machine," he says, "[is] repeatability and intuitive interface. I want it to be able to deliver the parameters I set consistently, and I want to be able to change those parameters as easily as I could if I were doing it by hand, [for example,] adding more or less water, changing wa- ter temperature." Good thing for Erin, then, that all the brewers featured in this piece take both of those pivotal elements into deep consideration. With technological advancements, however, come inevitable questions: How much should we rely on the machines to do the brewing? Is it wrong to be dazzled by high-tech pressurized infu- sions that don't require much if any human input? Should any coffee machine come with a five-figure price tag? If the emphasis is on the equipment, what will happen to the baristas? The argument about man versus machine has long raged in per- son, in print, and online in specialty coffee: Which has the superior intelligence? Is a machine capable of art and interpretation, and is human capable of pure consistency? It's understandable for cof- fee professionals who have studied and honed the craft of brewing to look at a roundup of innovative new brewing technologies and wonder whether the world needs another super-fancy coffee ma- chine, or whether we're simply trying to build a better mousetrap. However—and thankfully!—we all seem to be realizing more and more that in order to make the best coffee possible we need to work together behind the counter, whether we're powered by caffeine or electricity. Brewer manufacturers and other tech gurus are increas- ingly developing equipment that unites the skill and passion of the barista with the efficiency and consistency of the 'bots. Talking to the manufacturers and designers, one realizes the pas- sion, inspiration, and deep desire to improve coffee quality overall that's driving most of this latest tech boom forward—not the desire to make baristas irrelevant to the process. "What's the relationship of the barista to the coffee machine, what's the customer's relationship to the barista, and where does the coffee roaster and the shop owner fit into that?" asks Jeremy Kuempel, founder and CEO of the beautiful new single-cup brewer Blossom. "The personal element of coffee is just critical, it's what the customer comes for: At the end of the day we're not in the coffee business, we're in the people business, and you need to give that personalized service to every customer." Even as a designer and an engineer, Jeremy recognizes that ma- chines without manpower can only achieve so much in pushing cof- fee forward: "We looked at doing a fully automatic coffee machine, but we found that's not what makes the best experience, and it's not what people are looking for. What we are looking for is new tools and capabilities, new ways to ask questions and answer them." Jeremy's brewer, which is one of the latest to utilize immersion brewing in concert with fully customizable brewing parameters, not only still allows the barista to have ultimate control over the vari- ables and specifics of a brew and a recipe, but also frees him up to interact more with the customer because he's not laboring over a pourover, or fretting over inconsistencies in his product. "I think what we're seeing already happening is that the role of the barista is evolving into something more like a sommelier, some- one who has knowledge of the product, who understands the tasting notes and the character of the coffee and communicates that to the customer," Jeremy says. "[The Blossom is] a tool for the barista to take that professionalism to the next level." If we took a quick survey of the brewing technology that's hitting the market—the Blossom included—a few trends would stand out immediately. One of the words that appears most frequently across the brew board, for instance, is precision, meaning the ability to ful- ly program and subsequently re-create a high-quality coffee experi- ence for customer after customer. Obviously this type of repeatabil- ity is a golden opportunity for business owners, who recognize their customers' desire to know what they can expect from the drinks they order at their favorite café. Baristas, too, can benefit from an increased ability to brew more consistently: The sheer stress-reduction offered by some of the lat- est and greatest machines out there would certainly be a welcome addition to any high-pressure shift, and if a barista is still able to dial in a coffee initially and critically without worrying about main- taining or manipulating those brew values throughout the course of a day, why, naturally he'd be more ready and willing to talk about where the coffee comes from, what its process and variety is, and why the customer has reason to be excited to order it. 67 www.baristamagazine.com B o o k 4 7 - 9 2 . i n d d 6 7 Book 47-92.indd 67 5 / 1 5 / 1 4 1 0 : 4 5 P M 5/15/14 10:45 PM