Bitter Press

Thoughts: Automation and technology

Things are happening at Cafe Grumpy. Not only do they have one of the first Bunn Trifecta’s installed, according to a few tweets, they also have one of the first LB-1’s from Luminaire Coffee Equipment, and articulated water delivery system.

Both pieces of equipment are a push towards  automation and eliminating degrees of error when brewing. The Trifecta is a single cup brewer with a pre-set water jets that are programmable for the amount of agitation you want in your cup, and the LB-1 is a water delivery system that has dynamic temperature and flow rate control, so you can manipulate pour over coffee with consistent results.

The Clover, more than anything, proved that there was indeed a market for semi-auto single cup brewing. Not only was the novelty of a new brew method eye-catching, the spectacle of the piston rising and falling caught a lot of attention of the average customer. We’ve learned, as Americans, to trust automation and technology to replace human operators in most manufacturing aspects, so why wouldn’t a high-end piece of expensive technology brew a better cup?



But Clover still has manual agitation. You have to have someone with a bit of training stir the coffee to get everything saturated and reach an appropriate extraction level. What this also did was leave a backdoor open — Starbucks found it hard to convince people to get on board with it’s Clovers, and the skill level of the employee was definitely mentioned in an article by Wired when the writer did a taste test between a Clover prepared by one it’s creators, David Latourell, and one prepared at a Starbucks.

So what is the Trifecta? The great friendly robot that turns the palate into the coffee maker’s deadliest weapon and helps level the playing field? There’s definitely a pizazz to it, and I’m all for extremely high quality coffee that’s readily available and automated — like the Clover, this puppy is best suited and probably developed for a high end restaurant. Let’s face it, the best chefs in America usually have little knowledge about specialty coffee, and then training the line cooks or the wait staff to prepare coffee is too time consuming and costly. Having an automated system like Trifecta that can be profiled would definitely improve the quality of coffee in most places.

And the LB-1, while a very impressive piece of machinery, takes perhaps a little bit too much control out of the hands of the coffee maker. One of the great  advantages I feel when I have making pour over coffee is my direct interaction with the flow rate and the personal connection I have with the coffee. Not to get all spiritual, but without that connection, why bother making coffee? In food, even the best molecular gastronomist needs to have a well developed palate and a passion for flavors. At the same time, a steady flow rate is hugely promising — when going from one person to another, there can be a huge variance in flow rate, meaning inconsistent extraction.

Of course I haven’t seen either of these systems up close and personal, and I’d be an idiot to try and weigh in on them without experiencing their benefits. I could be completely wrong, and these might just be the future of coffee.

And then there’s the Uber Boiler. It’s got the same concept behind it as the LB-1 does — a dynamic temperature control, flow rate control, but this one has a built in scale/drip tray on it, and is one of the sexiest pieces of coffee equipment I’ve ever seen. Pouring by weight is an advantage that people tend to promote (and I have yet to be swayed by), but fundamentally it isn’t too different from the LB-1. And yet I want to play with it so bad.

That my friends, is the Clover effect. While the Trifecta looks a bit cheesey, and the flashing lights are a bit over the top, the Clover was always sleek, professional, clean, and modern. The Uber boiler instills confidence just in it’s design. Does that make me a hypocrite? Well, technically no, but I’m definitely somewhere in that area.

When the Clover was taken off market, there was obviously a void left that these systems are trying to fill and improve upon. Automation can flatten out the variance from person to person and produce extremely repeatable results in a tasty cup.

The real overarching question is just where should we be moving when it comes to technology versus training. As far as espresso is concerned, the movement in the past few years has been from semi-autos with pre-measured shot volume to paddle-driven ristretto pulls which rely greatly on the skill of the barista. Now that drip and immersion coffees are heading into automation, that makes me wonder if everything is cyclical?

Once automated systems take hold in these next few years, will there be a renaissance of hand-pour fanatics reclaiming the industry professing that nothing beats a human touch? The final answer is determined by two groups of people – the coffee industry worker and the paying consumer. What we’re left with is a sort of catch-22: people feel very strongly about both sides of the spectrum, and no matter what side people stand on, it could be difficult to convince them otherwise that the other side of the debate has valid points as well.

Personally, I like to think that great coffee doesn’t demand expensive automated systems, but that’s just the side of me that wants to make amazing coffee accessible by everyone. And while I appreciate many of the advances in technology that make my job easier, I also want to make sure that everything I can do in the store is easily something folks can do at home to get a great cup.

Trifecta video:



Uber boiler video


New Uber Boiler from James Hoffmann on Vimeo.

1. bitterpress posted this