For more information on Team Verve, teams from our wholesale accounts Bellano, Bloom, and The French Press (fb), and their adorably ferocious competition, check out the USBC bios page!

We’ll be back and settled into our new place on the third of August, when I’ll report for duty for two weeks of bar shifts to kick things off.

Hope to see you up there soon!

In the 2007 WCBC finals, Kyle G and Chris B shared the uh, stage-area for their overlapping 15 minutes of preparation/performance, respectfully. Before time had started, Sarah Allen engaged Chris in some light banter. I forget the lead-up, but she must have hit upon the subject of the cool new grinding toys, as Kyle is moved to good-naturedly taunt Chris: “You ain’t got no distribution!”

General laughter, as I think to myself, “what a great coffee insult!” But oh no, when that first espresso is ground, I see I should take Kyle more literally. Chris has a distribution, in the sense that he gets the coffee into the basket. Portafilter angling? Fork knocking? Grooming? Leveling? Tamping? Nope! (OK, he tamped) That modified Anfim is timed so accurately, and swept so efficiently, he just doses the full weight into a clean little pyramid in the basket. Beautiful.

This is all old news, of course. In the time since then, we’ve seen the mass production and proliferation of similar grinders. Technique has changed to adapt to this new machinery, much to the tune of what as demonstrated in competition that day. Still, I had never given much thought to applying what I’d seen and learned from this new generation of grinders to traditional doser models.

On a trip to Verve not so long ago, I spent some time harassing Jared and Ashley during their shift. After waiting for their bar seating to clear out, I grabbed a seat and enjoyed a great vantage of their workspace. And it’s from here that Jared gets me thinking about all of this. On the bar are three stock Majors: flat burrs, doser (maybe a little sweep mod? Didn’t ask.), untimed…but employed like a Mazzer E series. He rests the portafilter on the fork, no angling or rotating, doses a neat little pile, knocks it at regular intervals, and tamps. This being new to me, I have some questions. Jared obligingly answers them & pulls a shot to show me again. His general philosophy? In a year grooming will be another dark age relic of espresso preparation. I think I may be starting to agree with him.

Ok. Onto some complete thoughts on this:

My habit has been to reapproach and evaluate my distribution and dosing pretty frequently. This has its ups and downs. It certainly keeps me in shape, so to speak, but I’ve never been totally content with the concept of varied technique depending on dose weight, basket design and rated capacity, portafilter diameter and style, etc.

In trying out what I learned at Verve then, I’ve mosly stuck with a Synesso triple basket. This is already a deviation from what I’d seen, as Jared was cramming in 24g of Streetlevel into ridged Marzocco doubles. I’ve used the triple in testing for two reasons: I’m extremely fond of the added clearance between coffee bed and dispersion screen on even extractions, and it is generally more forgiving of me using too much coffee as I teach myself this method. It is also important to mention I’ve restricted my tests to a bottomless portafilter. We serve singles at Joebella, and thus have spouted portafilters to work with as well. Even with a little plastic mod installed there is still an angled pitch to the doser, and the contact between fork and spouts forces the portafilter dead center under the chute and restricts any lateral movement. With the bottomless I can place the basket in such a way as to collect the grounds nicely (just a little to the right on the fork). Perhaps I can adjust the Elvinator some more to eliminate this. Otherwise it will probably end up essential that I rotate the portafilter during dosing when spouted.

With these parameters I’ve taken two blends (our everyday Folly and one in development) and pulled them in this new approach. They are both intended to be updosed anyway (20 for the folly and 21-22 for the experimental), but the first few shots in that giant basket were absurd. Here’s my issue. You _have_ to updose with this method. I’m knocking the portafilter on the forks to settle at two points (first @ 1/2 dose, and again pre-tamp), and it seems this is essential to ensuring the evenness necessary to eliminating top-level grooming.

Part of this is my fault. That first knock has never been part of my distribution traditionally, and it compacts the coffee so much that I’m losing my usual visual cues as to how much coffee I have in there. On the dockets are plans to bring in my hyper-sensitive scale and train myself for better consistency in this method. While It may well end up being possible to use this with lower doses, I really don’t see anything below 20g working out.

Anyway, my first shots with Folly were probably in the 24-26 range. I’d never tried the blend (or anything?) that high, and it was completely unidentifiable in the cup as a result. I made efforts to reduce the dosed weight. Right off the bat, my extractions aren’t looking as even as with my typical Stockfleth’s. Nothing horrible, just enough channeling that the stream would oscillate around the center for the middle third of the brew. But the taste: awesome!

I assume this is strictly a matter of dose, so I revert to old technique for a dozen shots. Only now, I incorporate the mid-dose knock to fit in an extra two grams. Confirmed. Visual pretty extractions return & the taste keeps that recently-discovered extra edge. The idea of grooming being unnecessary is still tremendously appealing though, and so far promising.

I’ve given it a few hundred shots more now, and as I build muscle memory for the exact approach, the extractions have evened out nicely. I’m tremendously happy with the increase in speed I’ve gained over fastidious grooming. And additionally, as repetitive movement seems to be catching up with me, I’m definitely seeing a decrease in tension of my wrist as the range of motion required to prepare espresso has narrowed significantly.

As keen on this as I am now though, I will definitely update once I’ve spent some time testing weight accuracy more objectively and played more with the range capabilities in the method. But I’m excited! Once I can hit anything between 18 and 24g in any basket at will, I may never groom again.

When thinking of all these individual clients: cafes, grocers, restaurants, wineries, etc questions arise: How long will it sit around in bags? In open containers? Hoppers? With which method will it be brewed? With blends, in consideration being paid to the application in mind during our development? Is the equipment routinely serviced? Already desperately in need of repair?

Further, when you consider the number of hands (usually in pairs) employed at these individual outlets the questions become a bit more frantic to me: Do they even drink coffee themselves? The coffee they’re serving? Have they come from a background in coffee? Food, at least? How long have they been serving coffee in one specific way, and how ingrained in them is it? Any possibility of relearning technique or information? The list is exceptionally long on this front…

With these considerations in mind, I have been trying to (slowly, so far) visit all of our clients. This is a quick enough process for a certain portion of our business. If a grocery store is shelving our coffees, I consider business-sided things like signage and placement. For those with bars, serving a full menu of crafted drinks and catering to large clientele, this means scheduling a time to meet with the owners/managers and member of their core staff. This latter part is the most fun to me. It is also, without a doubt, the most taxing.

I’ve learned so far that the easiest way to initiate such a session is when we first gain the account. New businesses are for the most part slightly overwhelmed in the ordeal of opening the doors for the first time.  They are very much eager for their new vendor to serve in a partnership role while they get their bearings. If management is new to coffee in particular, so much the better for us in expecting to serve a more active role in selling our coffee, both to the business and to the consumer. So over the last few months the majority of training visits scheduled have been arranged during the last few days of build-out, a soft opening, or coinciding with a uninterrupted change in ownership. The rest are then those who are actively striving to improve the quality of what they are doing. They want to  learn how best to treat the coffee and how to impart to the customer the level of artisanship and attention to detail required to obtain that perfection of cup. And they really want to learn how to pour latte art…