I have just returned from a holiday in mainland Europe and couldn't help noticing that everywhere you look the "Bean to cup" coffee machine seems to dominate in the Hotel, Cafe and Bar environments.
I have to say that I struggled to get a decent cup of coffee from any of these machines despite the huge amounts of technology involved. (We're talking about machines costing in excess of £8,000 each). Why the difficulty?
Well I can only go on my experiences here in Jersey where these machines have become so complex that unless a trained engineer is standing next to me I (as a coffee roaster) have no way of being able to adjust the output of the machine.
The engineer knows a lot about the machine's capabilities, but (on the whole) very little about what a great cup of coffee tastes like. This is incredibly frustrating for the roaster who may well go to a huge amount of effort to build a blend or buy a particular coffee only to see all his or her hard work destroyed because the coffee machine has not been set up appropriately.
Coffee being an organic product changes depending upon a myriad of conditions. If the operator can no longer make those tiny adjustments how is it possible to deliver truly great consistent coffee?
So please rocket scientist coffee machine manufacturers think about us humble roasters and come up with some much easier control systems that allow us to deliver that much sought after great cup of coffee.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
No comments:
Post a Comment