What’s Going on Now

For my 7 faithful readers, I know I owe it to you to let the world know what has been happening in the long while since my last spastic post.  I don’t have any cool mods or refurbs to show at the moment.  But the last couple of months have been fast and busy.  Crap, it is sounding like a Christmas letter already.

Betty of Spruce Street and me at the MA/NEBC

It seems like I am in Pittsburgh a lot these days, I could call this “What’s going on in Pittsburgh”.  The Mid Atlantic/North Eastern Barista Competition was held in Cranberry, just North of Pittsburgh.  I had the real privilege of volunteering for this massive event, which by the way, brought the crowd in like no other regional competition ever before.

The view from the Rennaisance Hotel, Pittsburgh

Barista Kevin at Voluto Coffee, Pittsburgh

Voluto Coffee, again in Pittsburgh, was a great experience.  While I was in town for three days of Grocery demo coffee, I stopped in here for 49th Parallel’s Epic espresso on a daily basis.  The crisp and uncluttered design was super sharp, the staff was knowledgeable and skilled, and the owners, Barb and Amalie, were warm and friendly.  It is definitely worth a visit for the coffee traveler.

Brandy of Lovers and Madmen, not in Pittsburgh

My friends of Lovers and Madmen have finally opened after what seemed like an eternity of pre-opening preparation.  At Ludlow and 40th in West Philly’s University City,  these guys offer a much needed touch of quality beverages to that side of the Schuylkill.

So that is what’s up right now.  Oh, I almost forgot, the Counter Culture Coffee Training Center in New York City is just about ready to recieve guests and students.  You will have to check here to find out about it.

MA/NERBC

The Mid Atlantic/North East Regional Barista Competitions, combined into one grueling weekend, have been accomplished.  Some 46 competitors, non-stop, brewed and frothed for three days.  Your champions are:

Katie Duris, Murky Coffee, Alexandria- Mid Atlantic

Amber Sather, AMS, Brooklyn- North East

I am too tired to type up the other finalist names.

Katie Duris, Gianni of Nuova Simonelli, Amber Sather

Ever wondered what causes big bubbles to push out of the portafilter spouts when you pull a shot? I use to think it was a massive gurgle of CO2. I thought that fresher coffee gave off lots of gas, which is true. But the gurgle effect is something a little different. Steam is building up in the space between the portafilter basket and the bottom of the portafilter. The steam pushes out big bubbles once the stream of crema and espresso fills the exit chute. This may not bother you, and I didn’t give it much thought till David Lamont mentioned it. But if you like to read the signs of good extraction you may not want bubbles or a back log of espresso to get all churned up before you get to see it. If you really want or need to stabilize the flow you can ventilate your portafilter.

This video shows the effect of a ventilated portafilter as compared to a stock portafilter with both fresh gaseous espresso and a slightly more aged and stabilized espresso.

Ventilated Portafilter

Meg will bury you with her polish technique

Meg and Cait of Baked and Wired in Georgetown, Washington D.C. came to one of our (Counter Culture Coffee) labs at the D.C. training center last week for some quality time with the equipment. As my loyal readers will know (you both know who you are), I am fascinated with Barista techniques and lingo. I consider myself a collector of sorts. I noticed Meg spinning her tamper like a D.J. and I asked her to reproduce her actions for the camera. This is for the benefit of the Barista community at large, as I hope to expand the knowledge and understanding of the craft among those who wish to know.

It looks a bit grainy in the compressed video, but look for the spinning logo on the butt of the tamper.

Ben Helfen’s format for Octane’s Thursday Night Throwdown has been picked up, with permission by some folks in Charlotte and Washington DC. I just happened to be in DC this particular Thursday at the Counter Culture Coffee training center where the event held its inaugural throwdown. Ben has sent his PDF for the judges calibration and scoring. Without a proper projector, the white erase board became the Jumbo-Tron for the evening. There was a smallish turn out, mostly from Murky coffee. Despite the short list of competitors, the experience and pouring quality was quite high.

Judges included Alex Brown, Counter Culture’s local rep who is following in Ryan Jensen’s cavernous shoes. There was also Trish Rothgeb, currently working as a freelance Q grader testing consultant for several coffee growing countries around the world. Thirdly was a man named Cupcake, who sweetly lives up to his name judging by the baked goods which he brought. Yum.

Katie Duris played hostess for the event, and she held her composure marvelously as she was followed by a video camera and a puffy microphone most of the evening.

Events began with judges calibration: Trish and Cupcake go over scoring criteria.

Katie opens the night's ceremony with a few words.

Nick Cho pours a reverse heart, not the winner.

To be held once a month, this will be a tough crowd to please. The skill level in DC is pretty well developed. Between Murky, Big Bear, and Peregrine, it will be hard to score well against this crowd. But don’t let that scare you off. This is an event worth the trip for anyone within a 2 hour radius.

Aurelia Updates

OK, so the Aurelias that are out there in coffee shops are basically the same as the WBC spec Aurelias, but not exactly. They can swap out the valves located in heat exchange intake and outlet, and valves in the group head, to achieve a near perfectly repeatable brewing temperature with only a 1 or 2 second flush time. My co-worker in Atlanta, David Lamont, did have in his possession a WBC spec Aurelia for a brief time, and he experimented with the Thermofilter device to find beautifully stable brew temperatures.

The WBC spec Aurelia with temperature stabalizing valves install

Nuova Simonelli has achieved stable brewing temperatures in a heat exchange machine by carefully controlling the flow of heat exchange water into the group head. Bear in mind that the group head holds 1 liter of brew water in a reservoir. While the NS people use their soft pre-infusion and ergonomic steam valve control as their big selling points, it is the ingenious temperature control that becomes the shining star on the crown.

Imagine if you will the water sitting in the heat exchanger for some long period of idle time. This water has become too hot to brew, while the 1 liter of brew water in the group head reservoir has become too cool. A careful injection of super heated water, coupled with appropriate convection to blend the two temperatures inside the group head itself, would yield brew water at a desirable temperature. Conversely, a heavy load of drink prparation would move the over heated water form the exchange to the reservoir, raising the heat at the group head. But again, activating the pump will blend the cooler HX water with the hotter reservoir water creating a flow of appropriate brew water into the portafilter. The 1 or 2 seconds of flush time will purge cooled water from the pre-infusion chamber and bring brew temperature water in place and ready for extraction. The NS people have said that longer flush times will raise the temperature of the brew water. This seems consistent with filling the reservoir with more and more HX water. This analysis is purely my synthesis of the information I have been able to gather from various sources and through communication I have had with those who have Scaced the WBC spec Aurelias. I may be wrong about the details of the temperature stabilizing process, but my explanation is an attempt to make sense of the facts that I do have, which are:

Fact 1- Aurelias for the WBC are not exactly the same as Aurelias currently being sold.

Fact 2- The difference in how the two set ups function lies in swapping out a few Gicleur valves located in the HX and the group head.

Fact 3- Aurelias without the WBC set up function like any other HX machine, only with a very slow temperature fluctuation.

Fact 4- Aurelias with the WBC spec valves hit the same brew temperature every time.

I do not know what the NS policy will be concerning retro fitting original Aurelias with a new set of valves, but if I owned one I would definitely asked about getting it done.

My experience using the Aurelia was very pleasant from a Barista’s perspective. There is good clearance between the bottom of the spouts and the drip tray which makes moving cups and shot glasses easy. The angle of the front ledge does give good sight lines to the working area. While some have found the steam a little fast, (reduced in the WBC spec, and cool pipes to the touch), I had no problem texturizing excellent milk. I was not bothered by the dribble of the pre-infusion chamber, but if you are NS has a part you can have installed that drains the excess drops in an unseen fashion.

All this leaves only one major complaint. Can NS style the appearance of the machine to be more appealing to the eye? They have other models that are a sight to behold, like the Adonis for instance.

Much more stylish, the Adonis offers curves and sparkles.

Scace and the Aurelia

If you follow these kinds of things you will be aware that the Nuova Simonelli Aurelia is the new competition machine for Baristas. When the question of sponsors for the WBC has come up in the past, people wanted to know if any company other than LaMarzocco would ever have their machines used in competition. The answer seemed to come back that if anyone else’s machine could pass the WBC’s strict temperature stability prerequisite, they would be considered for the machine sponsorship. Many machines on the market now boast either dual boiler or some other technology intended to maintain a constant brewing temperature. One can assume that the Nuovo Simonelli Aurelia delivers the temperature stability that they claim.

If you look at the transparent view they provide on their website you can see just enough confusing imagery to get that they do not want you to understand how they achieve stability in any real transparent way. The description explains the following about each group: they weigh 12 pounds each, they hold a liter of water, the brew water passes though a heat exchanger, there is only one heating element. This is how I believe it is designed to function (my best guess anyway). Water that is heated by the heat exchange is passed into the one liter reservoir located inside the group itself. The massive group is gently heated by siphoning water from the steam boiler. Because it takes so much energy to change the heat of the group and reservoir, the temperature remains relatively constant.

I had the opportunity to test an Aurelia with a Thermofilter. The machine had been idle for at least 15 minutes when I started, and I flushed the group to listen for any signs of super heating. The water came out with a hiss, which lasted for as much as 20 seconds. A traditional heat exchange might have hissed for half this length of time (at least from my experience). I flushed for another 10 seconds and found the temperature to be 209F, still to hot for good extraction. Another 10 seconds of flushing brought it down to between 198 and 200. There was a gently inclining temperature profile over the time of the shot.

Once the machine was brought down to a desirable temperature it did maintain it very well. If the machine stays in constant use it will stay relatively stable. A couple of idle minutes, however, and it was back to 209. There is a lot of flushing needed to keep it within brewing parameters if there are interruptions between coffee prepartion. There is a steep learning curve with the Aurelia, as with any heat exchange machine. One must use it a lot and taste the coffee it makes a lot and become intimate with it to get what one wants from it. The winners of the Barista Competitions coming up will be Baristas who have spent time testing heat exchange machines. The winner of the WBC will be someone who spends a lot of time with the Aurelia and a Scace device and really learns the proper flush times. The massive groups give up heat reluctantly, which is both the advantage of and the Achile’s heal of the Aurelia.

This makes me wounder if the WBC has rigid temperature standards at all. If this is the new competition machine then it seems obvious that they do not. I can’t say that I blame them for going with Nuova Simonelli though. It is terribly expensive to put on even small competitions, and the head sponsor has to flip an enormous bill. The competition machine will be form the one that offers the largest kitty, not the one with the easiest machine to use. This will weave out the Baristas that have been raised into the coffee industry with equipment that is so good that they have not had to learn some basic lessons in brewing equipment management. The winner will be an even better Barista than one who simply expects the machines to do the brunt of the work for them.   I know that great coffee can be made on heat exchange machines, but it takes a great Barista.  This year the cream will not rise to the top until after it has passed through a strainer.

Cool Barista Stuff

If there is one thing I admire, it is the ingenuity with which trail blazing practitioners of any given craft carv their way through the less trodden path. I have myself built various home made devices to meet my needs in times when tools were either outside of my financial reaches or outside of mainstream retail outlets. These things include, but are not limited to, tattoo guns, acoustic guitar side bending irons, and batik waxing frames. In my teenage years I amazed my father with the ability to create smoking devices from a wide variety of otherwise mundane house hold items.

I recently returned from my first vacation in 4 years. My family and I spent a week in the Poconos, and we made a couple of day trips to visit some of Pennsylvania’s most progressive coffee shops. While in Scranton, I stopped by Northern Lights Espresso, where they employ this creative tamping bar.

Adjustable tamping bar is installed below the counter.

I have seen short Baristas stand on empty milk crates in order to get leverage when they tamp. Sometimes they struggle with awkward arm and body positions and they just take the stress. This device at Northern Lights is a steel pole mounted below the counter. There is an adjustable arm that can be raised or lowered to the Barista’s preferred hight, and swivels under the counter when not in use. The white cup is lathed from high density polyethylene and is designed to fit the portafilter perfectly. Pictured above is Sarah using the device. After an initial press with the tamper, she bumps the white cup gently to knock lose any grinds that cling to rim of the basket, saving both the tamper and portafilter from any damage. I love this thing.

Across town is another great coffee shop called Electric City Roasting. They are also known as Zumo’s, since that is painted in the window. It was formerly a candy shop and shoe cobbler operated by the Zumo brothers. They had an interesting piece of electronic equipment on the counter. I noticed that both grinders were plugged into it, and I assumed that it was a timer of some sort.

This electronic timer can run two grinders.

The let me get behind the counter to examine it and the owner, Mary, was eager to share information after first asking me if I was a spy.  While this timer will only grind to the second, and not to a fraction of a second, you can connect it to a stepless grinder. It also has a pulse button, so you can set it to get you close to your desired dose, and then give it a half second burst if you wish. This is great from a waste control point of view. There was one also in use at Northern Lights. There seemed to be a swap of both ideas and employees between the two shops. While I was at Electric City, there were two Baristas from N. L. getting coffee there. Fun stuff.

Philly Barista Bash

Announcing the organizational meeting to plan the first Philadelphia Barista Bash, intended to bring the community together in the spirit of unity, and maybe a little friendly competition. That depends on if anyone slaps a Jackson down and says, “my micro foam can kick your micro foam’s ass!”

Cut Along Dotted Line

I have decided, for the time being, to offer to cut out portafilters for my friends and family. It is quite expensive to buy the pre cut ones, and there is usually a good charge for having someone do it in a metal shop on a lathe. So I’m doing it, for the time being, for the shear joy of shaping metal. I found a hole saw and a file quite sufficient for the job. With a hand held drill, some steady hand holding, (here is the hard part) and a little finesse with a Bastard file, a fine looking finished edge can be achieved.

2 1/4" hole saw, usually for door knob installation

Keep the RPM's low for better cutting.

Using a flat file, remove the burr and feathered edge for a smooth bottom.

Now all you need is the GB-5 from which you can watch ripples of dark brown, honey textured espresso drip viscously form you newly hollowed out hunk of brass.