This morning I got up early to fly over to Dublin, to the CatEx show there.  Apart from catching up with Stephen, and lots of other lovely coffee people, and catching a little of the Irish Barista Championship, I was really there to see the guys at Marco and the new machine they had on their stand.

I am not going to be able to get very far in all this without talking about the Clover first.  The reason that the Clover got me excited initially was that it was going to be a potential way to keep promises¹ made when serving coffee.  Some people hated the amount of control it offered (deeming it soulless automation), while others got excited about dialling in coffees.  No doubt the profiling it offered really appealed to the people who bought the company.

After the Clover disappeared from the market the industry seemed to take a step back and then dig out all its old coffee brewers and start playing with them again.  More French Pressing, Vac Pots popping up everywhere, and every self respecting coffee nerd having a Chemex in cupboard.

While researching different bits and pieces for a potential cafe Anette unearthed the Quooker Tap. Nice idea, but some problems when it came to coffee!  I began to wonder if it was possible to add a mix tap to add cold water, maybe drill a little hole in the end of the spout and put a probe in and live mix a desired water temp.  Stephen, Anette and I hammered the idea out a bit more but didn’t really know what to do with it.

At the Caffe Culture show last year we got chatting to Paul Stack from Marco about how possible the idea was.  His proposal was awesome – they would take on the project and build us one.  For them it was a great research project, and they are a bunch of wonderful coffee obsessed people who immediately understood where we were coming from.

Paul came over to the roastery in August last year and we went into greater detail about what we wanted.  I demanded typically ludicrous things:  I wanted a built in scale, a live temperature display, I wanted to be able to jump between temperatures for different coffees quite quickly.

During development Paul sent across piles of data and I was extremely impressed in the consistency of water temperature delivered – a swing of around 0.2°C with their testing kit once the boiler had stabilised.

What I worked with today is still very much a prototype – it will be developed a little more before it is shipped over to us for further testing.  Hopefully a drip tray, a built in timer unit and a few other bits and pieces will be added soon.  I am not going to go into great detail about how it works operationally because it is likely that that will change to something a little more intuitive.  Before use it requires switching to ‘BOOST’ mode that cycles water right up around the font to heat and stabilise the water lines for consistent delivery.  We’re going to work on more intuitive movement between brew temperatures and I probably don’t need to explain how to use a scale.

Water delivery speed was relatively slow – good for Chemex, and not too slow to be frustrating when making a press.

Some pics (remember this is a prototype!):

Marco Boiler

Scale control and water delivery

Live brew temp

Built to fit a large Chemex underneath!

All credit to Marco for working towards a very creative, versatile boiler that would suit people who want to embrace all brewing methods yet still want control and repeatability.

Initially the plan was just to build one for us but I think the reaction it has recieved at the one tradeshow alone means that they will be looking to produce more units if the demand is there.

For those interested I’d recommend e-mailing Marco, and they will keep those interested up to date on the boiler.

Oh, and it doesn’t have a name yet – suggestions welcome!

If people have thoughts or questions then please post a comment and I will do my best to answer.

1. there is a big long post coming baout making and keeping promises with brewed coffee – soon!

In recent conversations someone has said to me that they love a certain coffee, but not first thing in the morning.  Maybe mid-afternoon instead.  Initially I didn’t get it.  My very narrow mind assumed that good coffee was good coffee and that the rotation of the earth in relation to the sun shouldn’t have too much impact on how that coffee, my tongue and my brain all got along.

I remember doing an espresso tasting for a wine magazine a year or two ago now.  We tasted the espressos blind – the coffees rushed quickly into our room from the roasters themselves, set up on their own machines just outside the door.  I was excited to taste coffees like this, with other professional tasters and I remember my frustration when the journalist kept asking which espresso we had tasted would go best with chocolate cake, or would be best after dinner.  “This is irrelevant!” I thought, “I want to talk about how these espressos taste!  I want to talk about which come from clean, tasty green coffees, about which have been carefully and intelligently roasted.”  Except they weren’t interested in that.

I’ve written before that sometimes independent cafes are so desperate to be nothing like the chains they despise that they occasionally miss out on some of the smarter ideas and concepts that the chains use very effectively – having spent a lot of time and money researching and developing them.  I know a lot of us in the coffee industry are acutely aware that we drink coffee with a slightly different mindset to most consumers, and that we buy coffees in a different way too.

Does it devalue a great single varietal, single estate coffee to say that is great with breakfast?  If we say that it is a great morning cup are we missing a chance to say that it is an heirloom bourbon, a honey process coffee, part of only a 10 bag lot or that it has really nice red apple and red grape flavours in it?  Which is the most important piece of information to most consumers?  How are they going to enjoy that bag of coffee?  I’ve talked before about how the size of the promise we make is linked to the speed we build up trust with the consumer, but what about when we lose control of how the coffee is brewed?

I have become aware recently that I often talk about coffees in a different way, based on my own choices.  There are some coffees that almost require a little intellectual engagement – they are challenging and interesting and worthy of discussion.  There are also coffees that I drink when I don’t want to think about it, I just want to be satisfied and have a simple delicious cup. ²  Instead of talking about morning coffees – is there any value in talking more about why a coffee might be appreciated in the morning, to emphasize the tasting/sensory part more than the ritual part?

Last of all – what is your favourite coffee to drink around lunchtime and why?

1. That still does make me angry, and a bit frustrated.  It is probably the most common misconception – that the coffee itself has something to do with the strength of the cup.
2. We’ve touched on chuggability before…

Nonetheless it has been interesting to see what they industry press are writing about, what advice is being offered, what strategies are being deemed wise.  A word I am seeing more and more is ‘diversifying’.

Starbucks are in a mess right now, and they have been for some time.  To me the problems are linked to a gradual loss of identity over the last few years.  Right now they are putting out mixed messages – on one hand promoting better coffee, on the other hand discounting it. Worrying about breakfast sandwiches, selling CDs, whilst still trying to claim that they are all about the coffee.

Photo by tonx

For a while, in the UK anyway, McDonald’s were all about salads.  Big money on big advertising campaigns telling us what a good idea it was to buy a salad at McDonald’s.  It didn’t work, that isn’t why we go to that place and walking past a branch on my way home I didn’t see a single salad image on display and I have no idea if they even still serve them.  The saw salad’s as a way to help stop declining sales, instead of actually making the food they had served very successfully taste, and be, better.

We’ve all visited businesses that have scrambled for turnover through diversification – coffees, teas, smoothies, soft drinks, pastries, panani are only the beginning.  Every item added seems to drag the average care and attention for each item down a little.  Nowhere does a huge range of things exceptionally well.  In the end, desperate to catch all consumer demands the business looses all identity.

Imagine I showed you a menu for two different Chinese¹ restaurants.  The first has a typically huge menu of maybe 50 or 60 dishes.  The second menu has a total of 15.  Would you expect a difference in quality between the two?  Would the smaller menu imply a lack of imagination or greater care and attention to each dish?  If each restaurant does two dishes incredibly well – in which menu do you have a better chance of a great experience?

Starbucks do the desert in a cup very well.  They brand it well, they sell it well and if you have a sugar craving then it probably tastes pretty good.  The gingerbread latte has become weirdly iconic, and endlessly imitated.  Those drinks built the Starbucks expansion, and for many consumers they justified the premium price. ²

Starbucks have done a poor job of redeclaring their own identity and it continues to hurt them.  Businesses are looking at a bleak year ahead and I think having a strong identity is key.  You need customers loyal to your business, customers that have a connection with what you do, with the positive experience they associate with you.  Diversity may be a way to sneak up the average customer spend, and I am not saying it can’t be done well, but often it reeks of desperation or overreaction to a natural dip in sales (such as in January…).  Coffee is still a long way from being written out of people’s budgets – as long it is worth the price per cup.

Dropping coffee sales say more about what people think your cup is worth to them than it does about your customers think about the size of your range of products.

1. Or any cuisine with a typically very large menu
2. I justify that simply by the numbers they sold!