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Archive for June, 2011

Dear grinder manufacturers

Wednesday, June 15th, 2011

I have many frustrations with grinders but I am not planning on rehashing old posts.

There had been something else on my mind of late that is causing me increasing anger and frustration and that is grinder burrs.

It has always been a vague annoyance but recent experiences with one manufacturer’s conical burrs has pushed me to a point where I have to say something, and I hope you’ll join me in saying something too with a little petition.

Grinder burrs should not require seasoning. The fact that the cutting edges are not clean and smooth, and take between 5 and 25 kilos of coffee to act as intended, is unacceptable. They are selling an unfinished product and leaving it to those of us who care enough to bother to maintain the equipment to pick up the bill for getting them up to spec.

This is ludicrous. If you had to pull 100 shots before new dispersion screens worked properly then you’d probably stop buying that brand.

If we say nothing then nothing changes. I am sure it is possible for manufacturers to season burrs and sell them in a suitable condition. I am sure it would cost less than each of us dealing with it. (The set for my Uber grinder were preseasoned.) If we make it a priority for them then it will happen but it needs more than one grumpy, fussy, difficult geek to effect change.

I am sure some people will probably explain why this problem has never been addressed. I am sure there are excuses, challenges and problems. I’m more interested in solutions and improvements.

Do please sign below if you agree with me.
(Your name will only appear if you verify via email.)

Attn: Grinder Manufacturers

It is, in our opinion, unacceptable to continue to sell burrs that are not adequately finished, and are unable to attain optimum grinding without "seasoning" the burrs.

We would like to see your processing changed so that all burrs sold are suitable for immediate use.

Rich nieto,

Marc Shubitz,

xxxxxxxx,
Cooolio

Johnny Kemnitz,

paul seo,
i strongly agree

Jordi G.,
thanks for your attention

Adam Lowes,

Robert Merriam,

Michael Teahan,
Mahlkonig uses a steel that last over 1000 kilos and requires little or no break in period. Ceramics mills have similar lifespans with little change in grind quality over time, though they aren't great to begin with. New long life, food friendly mills from Italy are similar to the K8 steel used by Mahlkonig and Ditting without having buy a new grinder.

Some mills are deburred, but people company they aren't very sharp.

The mills are available, you just have to pay for the privilege. You can get these mills for Mahlkonig, Mazzer and Rossi grinders right now and Robur mills are in the pipeline.

Ponganes Espresso,Thailand,
Absolutely agree with.I 've had this problem with Robur E and I never knew before.That make us waste the time,money,frindship.

Charles Stewart,

xxxxxxxx,
Totally agree

angel Kyodo williams,
The paradox is you will sell more burr grinders as a result of making them more accessible. We love our coffee. We love it done well and will obsess to make it right. We don't, however, wish to obsess over grinders.

Seth Taylor,

Muhammad Abgari,

Brian Birdy,
Very valid request.

Nicholas Frith,

Gabriel Tan,
Having 4 Mazzers in a very busy shop means changing them every so often which require shitloads of coffee... stale or not. Too expensive and exercise. I second your emotion!!

Jeff Gershik,

Rich Mattis,

John Hancock,

Rachel,
Thank you! I was very frustrated yesterday during a busy morning due to an "extended" seasoning process!

brie kenoyer,
the cost of pulling hundreds of shots, wasting valuable espresso, customer time, and barista wages is a huge waste. I look forward to only purchasing pre-seasoned burrs, and leaving subpar manufacturers behind.

Linda Siefker,
TY

Jiri Sladek,

Brady MacDonald,
Build better burrs! please

Trevor Hyam,

Kevin Evans,

James Weeks,

Drew Fitchette,
fight the proverbial power

Isabella Silver,

Nik Virrey,
I stand in full agreement. Find the solution.

Wayne Oberholzer,

Roeland Lenaerts,

Sarah Dooley,

aaron dibben,

John Letoto,

Michael Walcher,

Kalle Freese,

Mark Pienkowski,

Michael Gregory,

Logan Gray,

Will Frith,

David Pickering,

Christoph Darjanto,
Make grinder with self-cleaning system

Ryan Soeder,

Trevor Green,

Terry,

Astro Ongjoco,

Stefan Hersh,

Frank Freeman,

Ian Holiday,

Robin,

Bailey Manson,

David Flynn,
yes.

Zachary Carlsen,
Yes, please.

Polina Vladimirova,

Scott Crispo,
grinders need to up there game all around.

Brian Thayer,

Jesse Kahn,

Preston Peachey,

Kate Blackman,
It's terrible to waste so much and worse to serve it. The bar loses and the customer loses.

Matt Banbury,
Its pointless to waste good product (already as scarcity) on getting these machines to operational standard.

Luke Mutton,
I don't buy a car and have to run 1000 liters of petrol through the engine before the car drives probably.. It's ready when I buy it. Imagine taking a new Mazda 3 for a test drive and it only reaches 60km/h. Salesman: "it's okay, once the engine pistons wear in after awhile, it'll go faster"

Ed Bourgeois,

Stuart Wilkinson,

Brady Butler,

Doddy Samsura,

Aaron Duckworth,

Shaun Parrish,

Jesse Gordon,

Logan Potts,
In seasoning our Robur we wasted 50 lbs to get it seasoned. 50 lbs of coffee that took many many hours and hands to process. Would you mind picking up the tab mazzer?

Jason Dominy,
Amen.

Lorenzo Perkins,
For the cost of the burrs alone this is a worthy petition, let alone the cost of the cost of the grinder. Too much money to put up with inadequate performance.

Rachel Lehman,
Amen!

Tamar White,

Bluecold,
I will probably never need new burrs as I'm just a home user with a 68mm conical, however, I do feel for the cafe owners that have to burn through ridiculous amounts of coffee.

Nikolas Krankl,

Ed Benton,

clancy cramer,

Mark Lowes,
We change our Robur burrs every 6 weeks in our high volume cafe. Ridiculous expense to our business - we run nearly thirty kilos through each new set before they settle down. Crazy.

Rachel Haughey,

nicolas kypreos,

Ryan Toleman,

Alistair Durie,

Eric J. Schwarzenbach,

Michael Empacher,

René Macaulay,

Jason Scheltus,

Hallie Rose Taylor,

Benza Lance,
WORD.

charles Lambert,

david evans,
after 200 lbs of coffee I was advised that it might take 5 or 10 pounds to make them work properly. Machine not fit for my bar.

Kevin Cheng,

Jacob Landrau,

Joao N M D Almeida,

Jasper Overdevest,

Cristian Girón,

kyle tush,

Adam McGovern,

Andrew Cunningham,

matt lynch,

Sam Sgambellone,

Paul Asquith,
Absolutely! This has always been a problem. I constantly tell customers that it might take a week or more for their grinder to come good. Would be nice to install, train and have something ready to go!

Sam Little,

Nathanael Mehrens,
thanks, jim, for giving us a way to do this.

Lynsey Harley,

tim marriage,

Luke Byrne-Perkins,

Tim Van Dragt,
I don't hand the milk pitcher to my customers and tell them to pour their own latte. Why do you expect me to finish your job for you lot (burr manufacturers)?

David Figdor,

Jan Freudenthal,

Matt Troughton,

Nate Eakman,

Jordan Barber,

Micah Metheny,

Jamie,

Joshua Lindstrom,

Scott Witham,

Meg Passarell,

Tim Varney,

Raimond Feil,

Jonathan wadham,

David Leong,

Michael Widmann,

Scott Luengen,

Robert Goble,

Philip Pollen,

Alex Negranza,

Hunt Slade,

Alex Goforth,

mark wain,

R. Justin Shepherd,

Daniel Williamson,

Johan Larsson,

Luke barrett,
James, you have just summed up my entire week. Excitement about new gridner quickly turning to frustration with inconsistent results... Not cool.

Toshi Yamaguchi,

Richard Park,

Patrick Smith,

Cameron Crichton,
damn right

Cory Andreen,

Luis Rodriguez,

David Donde,
It is high time the grinder industry started taking speciality coffee seriously.

Davide Birse,

Francis Clark,

Olaf Draeger,

Ronald Ngo,

Mart Roosimagi,

Sam Carey,

Sam Keck,
had endless trouble with a particular brand after replacing old burrs - not exactly time well spent in a busy cafe

Troy Mallett,
In every other industry an unfinished product is unacceptable. What do you think would happen if you were at a restaurant and your chicken was not completely cooked?

Daniel Faucette,

Jered Marrington,

Aaron Hall,

Laura Perry,
Tested 10 new conical burrs a couple days ago, and 8 were deffective. Lots of hours spent and lots of wasted coffee. Would love to see more care on the manufacturers part to actually test burrs or at least approve them prior to shipment to a distributor. With 13 (and counting!) To maintain, this is very relevant to my job.

James Hill,
very timely! received burrs today for ditting 804 and will now have to season them - but it's even worse. i'ts just me and my wife drinking coffee! long time to go...and where do we get 25 kg of beans!!!

Nathanael May,

Ryan Willbur,

Caytie Hudgins,

Stephen Dozier,

Kevin Lionais,

James Andrews,

Howard Barwick,

Eric Zuniga,

Michael mc laughlin,

Paul Stack,

Kris Rosentrater,

Charlie,

aaron ultimo,

Colin Harmon,

James Phillips,
I'm currently testing a couple of new grinders out and it is driving me nuts figuring out how much/if I need to season the burrs on each different one. Just imagine if they came ready to rock?

Jason Haeger,
It's about time this has been addressed!

Michael Burke,

Matija Hrkac,

Andreas Martinu,

Stephen Frame,

Jesse Crouse,

Melody Lu,

Timothy I. Houghton,

Brian Ludviksen,

Charlie Powell,

Mateusz Kubik,

Franciszek Ambroziewicz,

Nik Orosi,

Sarah McLeod,

Sebastian Lösch,

Angus Lindsay,

John Hauxwell,

Anthony Horter,
I see it as basically an unfinished product.The manufacturers are very proud to inform you of how much each burr set can grind, but neglect to inform how much is frustratingly ground before the burrs are within working spec.

Nick Nestoros,

Jeremy Hogan,

Mihai Panfil,

Nicholas Kohout,
Will encounter this in a few weeks; not looking forward to conditioning a new burr set.

Neil Oney,

Karin Sternberg,

Mike Mierzejewski,

Gethin Lynes,

Kevin McConnell,

David Seng,

Ian Callahan,

Ben Toovey,

Andrew Barnett,
Jim's eloquently express the frustrations of many of our colleagues.

Aaron Wood,

Mark ambrosini,

Mike Marquard,

Steve Lee,

Chandler Rentz,

Eric Valdivia,

Tom Ailor,

Anneliese Martinu,

Andrew Tolley,

Gwilym Davies,

Ben Whitaker,
Completely Agree!

Tibor Varady,

Caty Rent,

Callum Hale Thomson,

Jeremy Williamson,

Caspar Steel,
Somebody from Ditting told me about using rice to season/clean grinders?

Gary Mc Gann,

Mark Prince,

Ben Townsend,

Dominik Janda,

Paul Bonna,

Ian Clark,

Marton Tömpe,

Renato Correia,
PS... While you at it, pls redesign the entire grinder for more consistent results...

Simon St-Pierre,

Paul Radin,

Peter Van de Reep,

Michael Bates,

Brett Lanyon,

Bronwen Serna,

Michael Vaclav,
I agree

Brett Felchner,
Great post James

François Knopes,

Stefan A. Engelien,

Alexander Ruas,

xxxxxxxx,

Maxwell Colonna-Dashwood,

Friso van der Mei,
No More "rice" :-)

xxxxxxxx,

Karl Purdy,
James, you are grumpy but I love it & concur!

Radoslav Plešinac,

Jonathan Aldrich,

xxxxxxxx,
Customer just had major issues with an unseasoned Robur.

Mike Hartnett,

Matt Milletto,

Alexander MacIntyre,

Rowland Crawte,

Keith O\'Sullivan,

Christopher Scheirer,
Amen!

Scott Lucey,

Chris Birkett,

Carlos Ferrer,

Edmund Buston,
This is a start and then let's experiment with burrs. IMO uniform grind size = uniform extraction, prove me wrong please.

Chris Capell,

ALBERT SOTO,

Alex Bernson,

Victor Frankowski,

Chad Little,
"Jepy" help us all.

Bill tahtis,

Wille Yli-Luoma,

Todd Campbell,

Chris Owens,
Seriously!

Jason Calhoon,

Gary Whiteley,

Shawn Person,

Will Corby,

Tim Logan,
Long overdue.

Rune Johannesen,

Jeff Hoeppner,

John Martin,

Stephen Heller-Murphy,

Josh Hockin,

Jacob Orr,

Martin Pearson,

Anthony Rue,

Kyle Glanville,

Aaron Braun,

David Robson,

Jackson O\'Brien,

Klaus Thomsen,
Agreed!
Just changed the burrs on two of our Mazzer Roburs today and it's simply SO frustrating to have to grind kilo after kilo of coffee through before it's any good.
There's a huge gab in the market for new burr sets. Where are the experimental burrs? The VST baskets of the Burr Set? C'mon already!

Ryan Wanslow,

Collin Moody,

James Hoffmann,

Posted in Opinion | 23 Comments »

UK Brewers Cup

Sunday, June 12th, 2011

So yesterday was the UK Brewers Cup – and I think it was a great event, and irrespective of the result I am extremely glad that it happened.

Initially there wasn’t going to be a UK Brewers Cup. With the World Brewers Cup being relatively new, countries had the option to nominate someone to compete, and the SCAE UK asked me. I’ll be completely honest – I did want to compete in the Worlds because I really like this competition. However, it seemed a little unfair and I thought that it would be a fun competition to put on. I made a deal that I would go and represent if I failed to organise the UK competition myself. Because I had wanted to compete I planned to enter into the competition – competitions have always proven to be great learning experiences and I thought this one would be especially fun.

With WBC and all that goes into it, this was perhaps a foolish proposition but I was lucky enough to be able to drag Andrew Tolley from Taylor Street Baristas and Gwilym Davies into the mix to help organise. As this was outside of the remit of the SCAE we also had to find funding and sponsorship and I have to say thank you to Paul and all at Marco for water boilers, Ed and Steve at Mahlkoenig UK for grinders, Paul at Coffee Hit for prizes and Peter from James Gourmet for roasting the round 1 coffee.

I was delighted with the response – we filled all 20 places very quickly (more seemed a little ambitious as we planned to hold both round 1 and round 2 on the same day, at Prufrock Cafe on a Saturday.) There was a great cross section of shops and roasters in the running, and we just needed a few judges.

Those judges ended up giving a heroic effort. They’d judge around 25 cups of coffee over a 9 hour period. I was impressed. Thank you to Grant Rattray from Cup of Excellence, Lynsey from United Coffee and Joanna Lawson from Twin Trading. (Unlike the other two, Grant isn’t a Q-Grader, but he has some substantial cupping credentials….)

The day was fun – a lot more people showed up to hang out, drink coffee and support than we hoped. The vibe in the place was lovely, and great coffee felt oddly accessible compared to so many other coffee competitions.

I made a little video – I tried to capture everyone during the day but in between organising, competing and just running around like an idiot I maybe didn’t do the best job. It should show everyone and the brew method they used. We’ll try and get some recipes up on the tumblr soon. I am annoyed I didn’t get good footage of Andrew running things, doing the scoring, organising judges and competitors and generally being awesome – thank you again for your help! He should have been in the video, so my apologies there.

So, I ended up winning. I have to say that I would have felt awkward enough about this, even without the mixture of cheers and groans that met the announcement. Nonetheless I am very pleased this event happened – I hope all competitors had fun. I shall do my best in Maastricht later in the month.

A big thank you to Jess for roasting some delicious coffee, it shouldn’t have tasted that good the day after roasting! For those who want the details I brewed a Kangunu AA lot, from Nyeri, at a ratio of 60g/l. The method was basically a filtered french press. (I like simple brewing). 4 minute steep time.

Posted in Barista Competition, Opinion, Video | 7 Comments »

Tamper Tantrum Live – my talk

Sunday, June 12th, 2011

Hopefully you’ve all watched Colin’s excellent talk I posted a little while back. If not then do so now – it is here. Today Steve posted mine up. It is very similar to the talk I gave at SCAA’s Symposium – but a little longer and you can see the images that went along with it. ¹

People’s thoughts and feedback on the topic are very welcome – what is also exciting is how many more great talks there are to come from the day!

Footnotes:

And yes – I have a Sprudge t-shirt! [↩]

Posted in Opinion, rant, Video | 7 Comments »

WBC 2011 Wrapup

Wednesday, June 8th, 2011

It is done and dusted – the 12th World Barista Championship has a new champion, and a lot of fun was had in the process. I’m not particularly good at these wrap up style posts, because it sometimes feels that there is too much to cover. Nevertheless – I shall try!

John Gordon made everyone at SQM incredibly proud. He took completely the right approach to competition – using it as a vehicle to learn, and I think because of that attitude has come away with a huge amount from it. His coffee was delicious (credit to Jess), and it was cool for everyone in the company to be involved in some way. I’m glad I overcame the nerves to watch him in the finals – he was great. Also – his signature drink is so tasty, shockingly so for something containing grape juice, hops, lime and espresso. Balanced, complex goodness and one of the few signature drinks that I could drink several of out of choice.

Making finals these days is a great achievement, a huge achievement. Making semifinals has become a challenge – the average standard of performances these days being much, much higher. Chatting to Matt Perger backstage he made the comment that every single barista was dialling in during their practice hour with a set of scales. (Essential for the weird atmospheric conditions). Speaking to a number of judges the average espresso was significantly better than ever before too. (Not that I am saying that they are linked…..) ¹

The competition itself was also pretty incredible. Not since Japan in 2007 has there been a stage like that, and never before has there been an audience that much fun, that noisy and that supportive. Those who got to perform on that stage got an experience that was truly unique. I am not disparaging Vienna next year, but I think this one is going to be tough to top, the way that Tokyo was tough to top. ²

For the finals I really enjoyed doing the commentary with Peter Giuliano on the live stream. Took a while for me to get into, but I hope it was at least a little entertaining for the folks watching online (and there were a lot more of you than I thought!). Feedback on that obviously welcome, and I think it is likely to be something that becomes increasingly common. Thoughts on that welcome, as I am obviously completely biased.

Having the WBC in a producing country was definitely a good thing. The farm tour that the baristas went on seemed extremely well received and the vibe behind the competition was great too. I’m absolutely gutted for Lina from Colombia, clearly so strong in the first round and then a tough semifinals performance that knocked her out. In fact (going back to how big an achievement making semis and finals are) if you look at who didn’t make it through you get as clear an idea of how tough it is, as if you were to just look at who did make it.

We have, without a doubt, a great champion this year. He’s lovely, genuine, passionate, talented and will make a superb ambassador for coffee. I hope producing countries in Central and South America take full advantage of a champion who understands coffee culture in a producing country, and who speaks both Spanish and English.

His performance was clearly exceptional – he was the one to watch from day one. Despite missing the first day, when I asked around a lot of people were pretty excited by what he was doing. If you haven’t seen it then you should watch it online.

On twitter afterwards I saw a number of people describe this performance as a game changer. In many ways I think that is a fair description, but perhaps I see it differently to other people.

Alejandro’s routine was a near perfect demonstration of the possible connection between a barista and origin. (It should be noted that Pete’s stellar performance was incredibly well executed along those lines too). In some ways the theoretical barrier that stopped producing countries winning has been lifted, but at the same time I think some of their advantage has gone as well. The winning performance next year cannot be along the same lines as the one this year. There must be change, there must be evolution. The card has been played to perfection, and now competitors much take a different direction. Pete picked, pulped, roasted and brewed his coffee. Hard to top. Alejandro’s signature drink contained everything the coffee tree producers, and as he performed both the producer and roaster watched from the crowd. I loved it all! I think Alejandro’s win is the start of something exciting.

I think that for the first time everyone is back to a level playing field – regardless of whether your home country produces coffee or not. I hope this means that next year we see more risk taking, more innovation and bigger ideas than ever before.

So. Best WBC ever. Seriously. An exciting year for a new champion, and I hope a lot of people went away reinvigorated about competition. ³ Congratulations to Alejandro, Federico and all at Viva Espresso (Federico is somehow even more passionate about coffee than when I first met him 5 years ago – which is saying something!), and to all who competed. (edit) Also huge congrats to Steve Leighton of HasBean for consistently roasting awesome coffee – I tasted Alejandro’s espresso backstage and it was seriously delicious. Congratulations to the WCE and Cafe de Colombia on an incredible event. I’m missing loads of stuff out, but I figure this post is long enough.

Thoughts and comments on this very welcome and there’s a flickr gallery of iphone shots here.