I am writing this post, because I hope it will help me make up my mind when I unravel the facts that are in my head, from my visit to Crawley last week. For those of you who haven’t worked this out yet, that’s Eversys Espresso machines.
Automation of anything has its issues. But let’s roll out the facts.
Imagine an espresso machine that re-calibrates every 4th shot. If it’s out it will go back to the original recipe, to the gram and second.
Imagine a manufacturer that makes a machine, where even I could take off a few pipes and pull it apart in 5 minutes. Followed by in 15 years there have been no machines that have been scrapped as the modules are constantly being serviced and re-used. There are so many ecological ticks so far.
Keeping on with the positives, here is my list.
Training= minimal. With the cost of employing someone to make coffee and the outcome being somewhere between a roller-coaster and an AC waveform. Speaking as a human I have good days and bad. Employing a lovely, ordinary or other person effectively costs at least £15 an hour. When all you have to do is push (the right) button you have a very consistent outcome.
Milk- due to the system, the milk needs to be semi-skimmed unless you want to have a close relationship with a service engineer (add emoji here) which will eventually come at a cost.
The consistency of the milk is uncanny.
So far we have a few minor imperfections, but the positives outweigh the niggles, which are?
You get to have 1 brew recipe for espresso. For those of us who “hobby” coffee we like to have a different recipe for espresso and milk-based drinks. It’s okay though. The middle ground actually works quite well with semi-skimmed milk. Who knew?
Due to how the machine brews (basically upside down) we get a little less body in the cup. If I had understood this earlier, I would have changed my recipe and increased the dose and maybe even the brew temperature a little to achieve more body.
In my niggle department, having to send someone else our coffee or driving 3+ hours to agree on a recipe seems a touch frustrating. Knowing that a site might be down for a day if a ceramic grinder goes down, concerns me.
I am left wanting to play and see how good I can make it. I can’t help but see this as being an exciting chapter. If a career roaster has a day off, there are a few of us that could cover. When your top barista goes on holiday, your cup quality will be at risk, unless you have a team driven by making better cups. That’s more people than ity used to be but it’s not everyone everywhere.
The theme to take away here is that speciality roasters are looking at this solution for several reasons. As an organisation selling or giving cups of coffee, I hope you want them to be good ones. If you are planning long-term, you may have the same machine in 10 years, even if you make many cups.
They won’t be cheap, but my gut says there is a reason why some big coffee businesses have engaged and the biggest machine company in the world ( I think) has bought them.
Watch this space and come and drink coffee from one after the summer break, for those of you who can.
