A Blog by Danny Pang, APAC Technical and Sales.
One Sunday morning, while sitting in a café with the warm sun rays peering through the window glass onto my table, I sipped on a cup of Ethiopia Nekisse filter pourover coffee, brewed with a V60.
It was served on a tray in a 2 cup Hario carafe. It was accompanied by a small glass of water, and a story card, explaining the origin, altitude, region, and processing method of the coffee, with a bit of a map of the country to boot. It also describes what I should expect from the brew; notes of jasmine, blueberry, mandarin orange with a silky body and sweet aftertaste. It even recommends that the coffee be paired with the orange carrot cake that the café makes in-house. Sounds familiar?
Everything was great, except that the coffee took almost 15-20 minutes before I got it. Yes, it was Sunday morning, and I was with my partner, who ordered a cappuccino, and her coffee arrived within 5 minutes of ordering.
Even so, I enjoyed my brew. Ethiopians have always been one of my favourite coffees. But, this time, it tasted different from my previous visit. I decided to order a second one as our conversations carried on. As expected, it tasted different again from my first order. It wasn’t bad, just other, the first was more floral, and the second more fruity and heavier bodied. I looked over, it was the same Barista making the coffee, but the crowd was picking up, and things were getting a little busier as the morning wore on. It also affected the time I got my coffee which was almost 30 minutes this time.
The usual knocking and grinding sounds from the latest fast, slick looking espresso machine were a familiar sight and sound. The espressos were churning out fast and furious with the milk frothing chugging away cup after cup. But the pourover coffee station where my specialty coffee was being made was still being prepared very deliberately and slowly as I could see the Barista trying her best to hand pour the water with her kettle slowly over the V60s Kalitta, and the occasional Chemex vessels. Each time an order for a specialty coffee came in, I noticed that she would sigh as it disrupted her momentum in making the espresso-based drinks.
I believe the above scenario is quite common in many cafes, especially when it gets busy.
Therefore, the question is, why must specialty pourover coffee be made manually and slowly? I get that there is some theatrics about the process of pourover mesmerizing and allowing the Barista to explain each detail to the customer. That’s all well and good on the stage for a competition. That happens for the espresso coffee, but we don’t see customers standing at the bar expecting to hear the explanation of the whole espresso coffee making and details of the coffee origins unless it is specially catered for in a special session outside of the peak hours of operation. So, why the insistence to hand brew specialty filter coffee?
Hence another reason I was told was that other than theatrics is that specialty coffee is expensive and should be carefully prepared in small batches of 1-3 cups. Many existing brewers, the smallest being those that do 1.8L or 2.2L sort of brews, can be wasteful as specialty coffee brews should be experienced immediately and not kept in an air-pot or decanter to be served 30 min to an hour later for the sake of freshness and experience.
So, if there is a system that can:
- Brew a specialty grade coffee in 1-3 cups (180 – 600ml) volume,
- Automatically and accurately delivers the water to coffee ratio to within 10-30mls
- Automatically dispense water temperature to a +/- 3 deg Celsius temperature from the start of the brew to the end
- Free up the Barista to churn out more espressos and cappuccinos during the brewing process, do some other tasks, or
- Free up the Barista to have a proper conversation with the customer instead of keeping harping on the details of the coffee-making (try explaining to every customer how their espresso and cappuccino are being made while they wait in line for their coffee).
Wouldn’t that system be a boon to serving more specialty filter coffee brews and help spread the appreciation of coffee in its purest and intended form?
Enter the Marco SP9.
Essentially, the SP9 is a tiny batch coffee brewer targeted for Specialty Coffee filter brewing. There is a growing wave of appreciation and popularity of single-origin coffee, for example, Panama Geishas, top coffees from the Cup of Excellence competition and similar events, and those unique coffees from one origin and region using special techniques of processing be it washed, dry, honey and anaerobic. These coffees are often best experienced as a filtered coffee brewed with a Chemex, V60, or Kalita, etc, in volumes no more than 500 – 600 ml (1- 3 cups) at a time.
Unfortunately, as highlighted in my previous scenarios, the purveying of such excellent coffees to the consumer is hindered by a very manual pourover coffee process. If I may be so bold to say, the craft of brewing such excellent coffees seems to be stuck in time, driven by the marketing terms such as “hand-poured or handcrafted.”
The cousin of filter coffee, the espresso coffee-making process, is a case in point.
If the espresso culture had NOT to embrace technology to deliver highly consistent and adjustable water brewing temperature, pressure profiles, accurate measure, and variably timed shots, reliable muti-boilers systems where a separate boiler is used to provide steady steam pressure for milk texturing, in sophisticated semi-automatics to fully automatics, we would still be making espressos with gas burners heating water boilers and manual lever (not even spring loaded) to pull our shots. And that would truly be an artisanal feat and test the master Barista’s skill in making consistent tasting espressos, shot after shot. I wonder which café business or a Barista would want to go back to artisanal coffee-making in today’s fast-paced demand for coffee over the counter.
Back to the process of pourover coffee. It takes a long time in terms of weighing, grinding, heating water, waiting for the right temperature of water to be achieved, pouring the water slowly over the coffee bed, …until about 10-15 minutes later, the coffee is ready to be served. In this 10-15 minutes, 4 or 5 cappuccinos or café lattes are already made and served. Hence, pourover is often time-consuming to make. Regarding the theatrics and sharing of coffee information, it is not even a necessity in today’s service expectations as customers are mostly sitting at their tables instead of at the bar. They hardly see or watch the process of the pourover anymore. They are more interested in talking to their guests or partners. With the Covid situation, it’s even less common.
Furthermore, the manual pourover coffee is very, very inconsistent. How? Let me explain.
When you manually pour the water over the coffee bed using a gooseneck kettle (often seen in many cafes today), the water temperature decreases by quickly 4-5 deg Celsius from the time it exits the kettle gooseneck spout. The temperature drops as you pour as the water amount in the kettle decreases. The rate at which the water temperature drops increases because, as we all know, a lesser volume of water always cools faster than a significant volume of water. Third, as you pour the water onto the coffee bed, the ambient air temperature and air movements over the coffee bed further reduce the temperature and cool the coffee bed.
Next, the rate of pour also affects the water temperature and the brewing temperature of the coffee in the coffee bed. The faster you pour, the higher the temperature of the coffee bed, The slower you pour, the lower the temperature of the coffee bed (i.e., brewing temperature). Also, the way the Barista holds the kettle and its height from the coffee bed plays a part. One Barista might be taller and have the kettle higher from the coffee bed. Another is shorter and holds it closer to the coffee bed. The resulting water temperature and brewing temperature are different.
Hence, with just one coffee, so many variables can impact the brewing process of such precious and outstanding specialty coffee. Often or not, it’s a hit or miss. And there is no consistency which results in a waste of such high-quality coffees.
At this stage, it should be evident to anyone that the manual pourover coffee is not an ideal manner to brew coffee, similar to the old, arm-powered lever espresso machine to pull consistent shots.
The Marco SP9 takes away all these inconsistencies and solely lets the Barista do what they are supposed to do. That is, to understand and apply the correct parameters, ie. Water temperature, time, and volume of water to coffee, to achieve the correct taste profile cup after cup after cup.
A system like the SP9 fulfills the operational gap to become the “semi-automatic espresso machine” of the tiny batch filter brewing. It still enables the Barista to use their Chemex, Kalita, or V60 to brew the coffee but:
- It automates the delivery of an accurate volume of water, at a very accurate temperature based on the settings on the Marco Undercounter boiler, in an exact time set by the Barista.
- Does away with the slow and manual water pouring process. (which is now less of a need in the current environment or a fast pace café).
Having said this, does it mean that the Barista is made redundant? Absolutely NO.
The Barista is the one that has to determine :
- What grind setting is best for the amount of coffee used. Less coffee, finer grind. More coffee, coarser grind. Light Roast, finer grind, darker roast, coarser grind.
- Set the best coffee to water ratio to brew that coffee.
- Set the optimum time needed to brew that coffee based on the roast, grind, and origin of the coffee to achieve the optimal target flavours. Hence, the real challenge is to have the knowledge of the coffee and what are the correct settings for the above parameters to set to obtain the desired coffee flavour and taste profile cup after cup. And this can change with the origin, type, roast, and storage time of the coffee. The Barista would be using more of their mind, understanding of the coffee and the system, rather than just on muscle memory.
The SP9 is a friend to a busy Barista and café. It’s not overly complicated (and shouldn’t be) to operate since it only sets the water temperature, time of brew, and water volume to deliver. The choice of grind setting and filtering apparatus be it the V60, Chemex, or Kalita wave, are still very much the options available and decided by the Barista.
I hope the above provides a clearer insight into why I love the SP9 system so much., especially from a professional coffee expert and consultant’s point of view.
Want to know more about SP9? Contact us.