During some recent shenanigans at Marco HQ, Paul Stack (El Grande Uber himself) whipped out a bunch of these Xpress thingies. They’re made by a company called Smartcup, and the basic idea is that it is a disposable french press that is also your cup. The idea of a cup with a built in press isn’t all that new, but in a disposable form I guess it is. So instead of getting a cup of brewed coffee and taking that away, you would get a cup of brewing coffee and take that away. I would have a few concerns, but anyway, here’s what Paul thought.

I have spent hundreds, nay thousands of euros on coffee equipment. I did not start that way, however. My earliest coffee equipment purchases now seem trivial, but then as someone merely dipping their toe into something unknown, they seemed like sizable investments. It can be hard to get that epiphany, “I get it” coffee moment without the ability to grind to order. In a way the availability (or lack thereof) of a competent low priced grinder is a rate limiting step in the appreciation of speciality coffee, and the growing of that audience.

Marco, who have recently become the agent for Baratza’s line of home grinders (minus the Vario), asked me to take a look at the Maestro, Maestro Plus and Virtuoso grinders. These grinders, seemingly around for eternity stateside, have never fully appeared over here, in civilization. Sometimes certain models have appeared under the Swiss brand Solis – and I think the Starbuck’s Barista grinder is an ancestor of one of the current models.

I first evaluated all three grinders for filter brewing, then for espresso. Cup quality was really my primary interest, but also observations regarding usability and build quality were made.

After I had dialed in all three grinders to produce identical cups (in terms of strength and extraction), I noted a few things. Firstly, the numerical scales on all three grinders seem to have been calibrated quite uniformly. I found notch 18 on both the Maestro and Maestro+ got me to 19% extraction, while setting 20 was required on the Virtuoso. This I like, it feels reassuring in terms of quality control, but also perhaps if consistent in the broader sense of production runs, may prove useful in terms of giving people starting points for particular brews.

The Maestro and Maestro+, which share a burr set distinct from that of the Virtuoso, produced a cup that was head and shoulders above any other domestic grinder I have ever used. So much so, that I felt it necessary to cup them against my Tanzania. While they did not meet it’s standards in terms of clarity and separation of flavour, their cups were relatively untouched by the malignant hand of bitterness resulting from excessive fines. No such luck with the Virtuoso. It’s cup was closer to what I would expect from a home grinder.

Tables were turned when it came to the espresso section. At one step above burrs touching on the Maestro and Maestro+ I was unable to produce an acceptable espresso. The grinds produced insufficient resistance and the brew water gushed through. The Virtuoso, on the other hand had no such difficulties. The espresso produced seemed perfectly acceptable, rounded. Fine.

In terms of build quality the Maestro is very much the poor cousin. Just pick them up, it lacks the heft and solidity of the other two. This also translates into a somewhat worrying hopper wobble during grinding (although I can’t say it affected the cup). It also lacks the front mounted button for activating grinding. Surprisingly I did prefer this on the other two grinders, not because it did anything particularly amazing, but instead because the side switches were near uniformly cack (that’s a technical term). I don’t like analog timers, I cannot turn them the same amount each time with any accuracy, especially as the burrs start turning before you even release the switch (ie as soon as you start turning it). I don’t really get the point of them. I’d much prefer a simple on/off button.

Grind retention seemed very low (0.5g perhaps) across the board.

While I don’t have grind distribution profiles for the grinders, all signs point to one burrset (Maestro and Maestro+) that produces a unimodal  (one peak) distribution, and a second (Virtuoso) that produces a bimodal (two peak) distribution. Interestingly from the Baratza specs the Maestro and Maestro+ burrs are claimed to be German manufactured while the Virtuoso is Italian. You could perhaps draw a conclusion about traditional coffee drinking habits in those two countries and what they may have been trying to achieve in terms of burr manufacture (Baratza don’t have any role in the making of these burrs – they are “off the shelf” parts).

I would have no qualms recommending the Maestro or Maestro+. It will be my go-to recommendation for those looking to get on the better coffee bandwagon (that and a list of urls to Europe’s best roasters). If you are looking for something to also use for espresso, then forget the Maestro and plus. The Virtuoso would be a reasonable choice for that task, but that is a much more crowded sector. Though, at €150 cheaper than the Mahlkonig Vario, it might  very well prove quite popular.

The first units have just gone on sale through Coffee Angel (in very limited numbers). It is my understanding that another small number will pop up also through HasBean. Initial numbers will be low, but expect supply lines through these sellers and others to fill up by summer.

I’ve posted at some length previously regarding extraction, TDS, meters and all that. I daresay I may become typecast in the role of extraction curmudgeon. That said, the Extract Mojo software and refractometer have become as much a part of my coffee toolset as my grinder, or kettle. However, the economy of the meter and software has been the one area I have had some concern. Ideally, everyone could afford the package, and we could all move forward, industry and consumers, both understanding how to get to where we want to be. Job done. The price barrier has been formidable for all but the most devoted consumers, and even, I imagine, for plenty of small coffee shops and roasters. The path to widespread adoption has not looked to be a speedy one.

Last autumn, I had a number of really interesting conversations with Vince Fedele regarding extraction, TDS meters, conductivity vs refraction among other things. At this time I had the coffee meter. Shortly after, Vince asked if I would consider taking part as a beta-tester for his new iPhone based “universal refractometer” software. And here’s the kicker, it would not only perform a lot of the analysis functions of the Windows based software, it would also allow me to use my Coffee meter for measuring espresso TDS (or vice versa – had I the espresso meter).

This amazed me. It turns out the two meters have the same ability to measure refractive index, but due to limited memory on the meters, conversion tables for both espresso and coffee cannot be accomodated. What once was quite a big expense for 2 meters and the windows software, had instantly become a more reasonable single meter and iPhone app.

The basic premise is that instead of reading the TDS value from the meter, you switch to nD mode (nD = refractive index), and by inputting the nD and temp (also read by the meter) into MoJoToGo, you get the TDS. Similar to the original software, the TDS is combined with the coffee and water doses (or in the case of espresso – beverage weight) to get you to extraction %.

There are plenty of other functions that are interesting, like saving recipes, sending recipes via email, geotagging, not to mention extended usage into Brix territory (home brewing anyone?). It’s probably beyond the scope of this blog post to adequately discuss all the features, so instead I’ll point you towards the new home of all things MoJo… www.mojotogo.us.

I can sum up my feelings on MoJoToGo thusly; in the time I’ve had the app, I’ve only used the Windows version maybe twice. The iPhone app is always there, in my pocket, ready to go in a second.

This is a ropey video I threw together. Apologies in advance.

Stovetop espresso is no longer a misnomer.

Thanks to Colin for the loan. Didn’t mention on the video, but it tasted good, clean, no hints of burnt flavours that you might associate with a moka pot brew.

More info here, here and here.

This is a heady time for filter brewing. I don’t think at any time in recent memory has the discourse been as vibrant. Gold Cup, Extract Mojo, TDS, extraction percentage, are terms we are all hearing a lot more of in recent times. They are becoming a greater part of the general coffee lexicon. This is a good thing, I hope this momentum continues. This post is really a continuation of the thought process in my last post on the subject. This post specifically asks the question:

Why don’t we use powder-fine grind for brewing filter coffee?

Before I attempt to answer that, let me start by addressing why I think a powder-fine grind could be a good thing.

With current grinding technology fines are inevitable. At a coarse grind, fines will pretty much fully extract in the time it takes to get a desirable extraction out of the normal grind population. This creates those not so nice flavours discussed previously. The finer your normal population becomes, however, the two populations of grind sizes start to approach unity in terms of speed of extraction, to a point where theoretically you could approach a single peak, of fines.

A lot of consideration has gone into populations of coffee grinds, but a coffee grind as a single entity is also worth considering. It has depth, volume, surface area, all characteristics that effect how it is extracted. Upon brew the outer-most layer of coffee, the surface, will begin to immediately extract. This is true for all grind sizes. Below the surface, however, the layers will not begin to extract until the solvent (water) has permeabilised the outer layers.

We cannot, however, create a grind that is composed of either all exposed or all unexposed layers. The smaller our grinds become, the surface area to volume ratio approaches, but never reaches infinity. The coarser our grinds become the surface are to volume ratio approaches, but never reaches zero. Both scenarios offer routes to near as possible grinds composed of one type of layer vs the other. Of course we are restricted in how coarse we can brew, by bean size, and practical brew times, not to mention that our assumption that an outer though not surface layer of a grind is equaivalent to an inner layer is evidently false.

Fine grinds are far less limiting. The finer we grind, the more surface area is exposed. Theoretically we could reach a point where we are close to, though never arriving at, a population of grinds that are all surface area.

So in terms of even extraction, fine grinds in theory should be better.

Another consideration is of course that fine grinds will extract much more quickly, and I don’t think anyone has ever said, “That’s a great cup of coffee, if only I had to wait longer for it”.

So, why do we not use powder fine grind for filter coffee?

The short answer is that the finer you grind the harder it becomes to separate the insoluble matter from the brew.

Relatively coarse meshes like those on a french press, or swissgold filters, will allow too much insoluble matter through. With paper or cloth filters it merely becomes difficult to seperate the grinds from the brew sufficiently quickly to avoid overextraction.

With that in mind, I picked up a piece of laboratory glassware that I have fond memories of using in my undergraduate chemistry labs:

I’m not advocating this as a filter brewing method going forward, but I hope it might give some food for thought. I suspect the way we think about coffee grinding is too simple, there are too many broad strokes in how we describe it, and how we describe its influence on a brew. I don’t think brewed coffee is a finished product. While I like the French Press, drip filter and vac-pots, I hardly think they can be the pinnacle of technological advancements in coffee brewing. Who is going to fill the void left by Clover? Where is the 21st Century coffee brewer?

PS the coffee from the video had an extraction of 18.5% (measured with a cheapo TDS) and tasted mighty fine.

PPS yes I made a rookie mistake at the end of the vacuum period.

Abid Clever

I’m going to be honest here, though I’ve had long-standing love affairs with the French Press, and even the vac-pot, drip brewing is a more recent interest. Like the good sheep I am, I’ll admit it was sparked by Square Mile’s now famous/infamous Chemex videocast. They are dangerous videos to watch because they usually make me want to go buy some new toys. I’ve actually really enjoyed using the Chemex, and other drip cones, I still love the elegance of the Chemex, but to a certain degree I find all of these manual drip methods as much of an art as a science.

With all coffee brewing there are 5 basic things you want to control:

• Coffee Dose
• Coffee Grind Size
• Water Dose
• Water Temperature
• Contact Time

Ideally these 5 elements would be completely independent of each other. However, with manual drip, contact time is inversely proportional to coffee dose and coffee grind size, meaning one cannot alter one without altering the other. In practice this often meant I was bumping up the dose a little, or making the grind a little finer to push out the contact time to the desired amount. It’s a bit like stepped espresso grinders, having to alter the dose to compensate for jumps in grind size.

Of course pour rate and pour style also influence contact time (and of course turbulence and agitation), but all things being equal contact time is dependent on coffee dose and grind size. Most people would agree, I’m sure, that contact time and grind size should be directly rather than inversely proportional.

Brewing...

Enter the Abid Clever Coffee Dripper.

These are not easy to acquire in Europe / US (yet). After scouring the internet looking to buy one, I eventually succeeded in getting one when the manufacturer kindly sent me one (thanks Jessica). I already had the tea brewer from Abid, rebranded by a few different sellers, which Abid call the Miraculous Coffee & Tea maker. Despite the name it isn’t actually great for coffee, producing a very sludgy cup (great tea brewer though).

The premise of their brewers is simple enough, you have a vessel in which coffee/tea can be brewed. At the bottom of the vessel there is a valve attached to a platform. When the platform is down the valve is closed, when it is pushed up (by placing the brewer on top of a cup), the valve opens, allowing the brew to exit at the bottom.

Basically the valve stays closed unless you place it on top of a cup or jug or something similar – then it opens.

Draining...

The Clever differs from some of Abid’s other brewers being cone shaped, designed to accept a coffee filter (solving the sludge problem). Flat bottomed filters (eg Mellita) are the best fit, though I’ve found Chemex and Hario (paper and cloth) filters to work fine with the brewer. There is a small space under the filter, which is a slightly larger, though still a small space with the cone filters – no biggie. Well, there is one time when this becomes a little of an issue, if you are brewing more than one cup at one time, the liquid that fills this space tends to be weaker than the liquid that remains on the other side of the filter paper. By separating the brew into two cups, the first would get all of this portion. In this scenario it would be best to first empty into a preheated jug, before portioning into individual cups.

In practice I found myself using a coarse grind, much coarser than I would have dreamed of with a Chemex, with a somewhat high dose (80g / L) – though I don’t mean to prescribe on this. For a 4 minute brew you can allow to stand till about 3:15 – 3:25, then place on top of the cup. I like to submerge the grinds, however, after about 30-45 seconds. The grinds settle at the bottom of the cone and remain in contact with the brew water until the final moments. It does add about 30 seconds onto the drainage time for me (with my dose / grind size / brew volume). Fairly simple stuff, and by and large I’ve been very happy with the results. A super clean cup that is incredibly simple to prepare (and clean up after).

Underneath...

Probably worth noting that it’s also dishwasher and microwave safe, and while I can’t see much use for the latter, the former is a nice option to have.

Made a video of the Abid – this isn’t meant to prescribe a “definitive” technique for the brewer – it’s just how I have been using it.

As always – can be viewed in HD on Vimeo.com.

Abid Clever Coffee Dripper from The Other Black Stuff on Vimeo.

*Addendum 1* the drain time is of course dependent on your grind (and whether you submerge or not). With finer grinds I’ve experienced drain times of up to 2.5 mins.
*Addendum 2* looks like Sweet Maria’s are now selling the Abid – as you can see from the pics the one I was sent had Sweet Maria’s branding on it – so it’s little surprise.

I’m gonna keep this one short. I’ve seen the good and bad the Vario has to offer, and as much as anything, I’ve taken away from my observations that the biggest issue with the Vario is the hype that preceded its release. It’s a pretty good home grinder, better than pretty good for espresso in fact. However, in creating unrealistic expectations, the grinder is going to get shot down, and people will focus on what it doesn’t do instead of what it does.

I don’t like pointing the finger at specific people, and I have huge respect for Mark Prince and his site, which if truth be told, I have spent way too many hours reading, and have learned a great deal from. In a thread regarding his “First Look” at the Vario he commented:

“It is also, in my opinion, the best bang for the buck restaurant grinder, offering nearly as much consistency, a potentially better grind, and nearly 2/3rds the speed of a Ditting KF804 ($1200) grinder. In many areas, it beats the Ditting, offering digital timers, a collection aparatus (the grinds bin), and a better grind (my 100mm 1:1 macro which is nearly a 2:1 macro on a cropped camera body tells the tale).”

This was in stark contrast to my observations of lots of fines in the French Press / Filter range of things – unscientific observations (dust, sludge etc) – perhaps a camera isn’t the best way to gauge grind distribution. Over on the Über Project Blog, Paul Stack of Marco was discussing their efforts in analyzing grinder pairings for the Über Boiler. He posted this picture:

Vario Vs 805 Vs Guatemala

In comparing the grind profiles of the 805, Guatemala and Vario, I think it’s fairly evident that there is a marked difference between the Guatemala / 805 and the Vario. Taking 200 microns as an arbitrary point for delimiting fines vs desired grind, there is a little over twice the amount of fines comparing the Vario to the 805 (relative area under the curve measured in pixels). In percentages this equates to 6.8% of the area under the 805 curve is under 200 microns, while 15% of the Vario curve is in that region. The main peak is also more squat and spread, giving a wider range at the “desired” level. For what it’s worth the 805, as far as I can tell has the same burrs as the current 804, and an almost identical profile. Mark may of course have the older cast 804 burrset, whose performance I don’t know.

So this post is really for those out there, like me, who are looking for a filter/press/cupping grinder comparable to the big boys, that (a) will fit in a home setting, and (b) will not cost a small fortune. For now at least I can’t say that option exists.

*Can be watched in HD on Vimeo*

Mahlkönig Vario: Some Observations from The Other Black Stuff on Vimeo.

The Vario

I first heard about the Vario grinder back in May of last year. Coffeegeek had some photos and info from the SCAA show floor, referring to a “hot shit” new grinder that was due out in late summer. I’ll admit now, my interest was piqued, majorly. The grinder is a collaborative effort between the US grinder manufacturer Baratza, and the German grinder manufacturer Mahlkonig. Baratza have a reputation for developing competent, well priced, if somewhat unspectacular home grinders, while Mahlkonig are synonymous with large retail bag grinders, cupping grinders, industrial grinders, and more recently the whole espresso grind-on-demand K30 thing. Whereas Baratza have previously used off-the-shelf burr sets for their grinders, Mahlkonig make their own burr sets. So it’s fitting here that Mahlkonig have designed a brand new proprietary ceramic flat burr set for the Vario.

The Vario is being pitched, price-wise at least (going for £316 – haven’t seen a € price as of yet), in the space between basic home grinders and larger professional grinders (so I reckon in the Mazzer Mini, Macap M4, Anfim Best etc space). Among the many product claims are broad grind range, narrow particle size distribution, near-as zero grind retention, easy adjustment, ultra precise grinding time settings, fast grind speed, cool belt driven motor, and hands free dosing. Phew!

The front panel.

My attention was caught, because Baratza/Mahlkonig had seemingly cherry-picked a smorgasbord of features most people would want in a do-it-all and do-it-well home grinder, and instead of building on the foundations of old designs, they started with a blank piece of paper. Having briefly owned a Mahlkonig Guatemala, which was hands-down the best filter/press grinder I’ve owned (amazingly even, and practically retained nothing, but too big for my kitchen), my hope was that this might be a diminutive alternative.

The Vario was kindly provided by Marco for evaluation purposes. I’ll spare you the unboxing story, needless to say, the Vario came in a box, and I took it out of it.

Here you can see the switch that must be engaged by the hopper to allow grinding.

As far as setup goes, you twist in the hopper, and you’re done. I found the hopper fit and twist to be very tight and stiff, requiring more force than I thought would be necessary. There is a tab at the back of the hopper which actually depresses a button/switch, which otherwise would prevent the burrs from spinning. My portaholder came assembled, though I’m not sure if all do, as there is some reference in the US manual to assembling it.

The very first thing I did was set the grinder to its coarsest setting, because I really wanted to see how it performed on the filter end of things. Even at the extreme coarse end it wasn’t particularly coarse, only slightly coarser than what I would consider for drip filter brewing. At the other end of the spectrum though, without even setting it to its finest setting, the grinder was producing talcum powder fine coffee. You know when you tamp a puck, and the surface is ultra-smooth, with no evidence of granularity that you are going to choke your machine. I knew this, but I put it in anyway. It choked my machine.

A typical enough shot.

Backing of to the second macro adjustment setting honed me in to where I needed to be, and I started pulling shots. The shots looked good, very good in fact. The lack of any evidence of premature blonding was a really good sign, it is something that I expect on smaller home flat burr grinders (MDF, Rocky, Anfim Haus etc).  Depending on the fineness, which in turn depended on the bean, clumping was apparent, not necessarily to the extent I’ve seen with the K30, but it’s a flat-burr, doserless grinder, it’s fairly much inevitable.

I hate the WDT (or “stirring” as humans would call it). I refuse to do it. The grinds would probably benefit from a good lash with a needle or something else similarly pokey. Some combination of Stockfleth or Chicago Chop (another silly term), will however, help to some degree. However, the most common thing I’ve seen is extractions that start ever so slightly donut-ish, a “problem” I don’t have with my dosered Macap M4.

Top burr on its aluminium mount.

Removing the hopper (again very stiff), and looking inside, the top burr is mounted on aluminium, which is seated in plastic. Some bean fragments had somehow popcorned out through the space between the hopper and the grind throat and were sitting on top of the upper burr mount. Twisting the aluminium mount counter-clockwise releases it from the plastic, but even at that point it’s so tight that it takes considerable effort to pull it out. The ceramic burrs seem small, with proportionally large breaking surfaces and proportionally small cutting surfaces. The aluminium mount is quite light, and the plastic, is, well, plastic. If there’s a valid design reason for the plastic aside from cost, then great, otherwise it maybe seems a pity to cut corners on a machine that has set its sights so high.

Espresso on the left, the coarsest setting on the right.

The next day, going back to the coarsest setting, it seemed to have gotten coarser, whether through reseating the burr set, or just breaking in the grinder by running about a kilo of beans through it, I seemed to have gained a bit of leeway at the coarse end, without apparently losing anything at the fine end. It’s still short of the shards that James Hoffmann advocates, but I’d consider it French Press territory. That isn’t to say I wouldn’t like more elbow room. I would.

Even with the Tim Wendelboe / James Hoffmann cupping style clean, I was still getting a mess at the end of the cup, which in fairness is probably about the same performance as most home flat burr grinders (ie plenty of fines). I also took this opportunity to check the grind retention claim. 17g went in and 17g came out. The weighing scales I was using was only accurate to 1g, but it’s hands down the best home grinder I’ve ever seen for (lack of) grind retention (well perhaps the $1700 Versalab M3 is comaparable).

Remnants of French Press. Lots of fines.

I took a detour on my way back to espresso with an aeropress brew, which was also nice (and clean!). Back at espresso, now using different beans, I found just a single micro notch finer change from the previous beans got me back in the zone.

The fact that I had changed beans meant that this was no indication of consistency in returning to a previous setting. So a follow-up test was performed (see the video). Shots were dialed in with lined glasses to a scant 1oz in 34s, using micro 6 macro 2 and 13.0s grind. These were repeatable. Both cams were then adjusted to a medium grind, some beans were ground, and then with the burrs spinning the cams were repositioned as per the previous shots. To my dismay the shots were now racing to 1oz a good 9s faster, repeatedly.

Going back to a predfined setting gets you in the ballpark I suppose, but it’s far from ultra-precise, and raises questions as to the true benefit of the twin cam adjustment system. It doesn’t seem to be more precise than most home grinders I’ve seen, nor does it seem particularly easier than say a Gaggia MDF or a Rancilio Rocky where the hopper is just rotated to a number on a dial.

I would speculate that a potential source of this problem is the fact that the adjustment cams don’t really click in to their steps with any great vigor (this is especially evident at the espresso end where there is a slight increase in resistance). They kind of slump into them, and it seems possible to not fully engage a particular notch. It’s hard to communicate this point, but there is a displeasing tactile feel to the adjustment.

Clumping.

Clumping and static combine to a certain degree to cause both a mess, and inconsistencies in dosing. Aside from the distribution woes, when the grinds start to pile up above the rim of the portafilter instead of forming a nice neat even pile, the clumping actually sends some of the little balls bouncing off the pile and out of the portafilter.

The mess is an inconvenience, despite much of it being caught in the portaholder, enough gets scattered around the kitchen counter to necessitate vigilant cleaning. A more worrying consideration though might be: what is the point of having a timer with 0.1s resolution if 0.3s of ground coffee can just randomly jump out of the portafilter? This limited me to dosing in the 14g-17g region, despite often dosing up to 20g using my Macap M4, because grinding beyond that range sent too much debris over the edge of the portafilter.

Despite these annoyances I was still getting shots that looked and tasted great. I started thinking that this was just another espresso grinder masquerading as a filter grinder. Somewhat alarming though was the presence of chunks of beans being really evident on the surface of the spent espresso pucks. Relatively speaking the puck seemed to be mostly normal espresso grind size, but scattered in their midst were these big obvious, out of place pieces. This has been reported by at least one other source separately.

Even grind?

This discrepancy, seemed a little out of place with the observed quality of the shots, which were the equal at the very least of those of the Macap M4. It also did not seem to create any big channeling issues.Nonetheless, it is a worrying observations and what I can say, though, is that the claim for a very narrow grind size distribution, at least on my unit (and reported elsewhere), based on this and on the fines in the grind bin at the coarse end, seems not to have been met.

The portaholder, while a clever idea, does not work in its current guise. Using standard enough E61 portafilters, and a bottomless E61 portafilter, I found that none of these were held flat by the portaholder. In all cases the gap between the top clip and the bottom fork was too large, even at its narrowest setting. This resulted in the portafilters sloping towards the user. Once grinding begun the portafilters would often slip completely from their position.

Dosing into the portafilter.

I am left extremely disappointed by my observations. For starters, in terms of grind consistency, the Vario certainly appears not to be a viable home alternative to a cupping / bag grinder. I wouldn’t rate the grind consistency as any better for filter/press purpose than any other home grinder I recall using. The grind range seems that if it was calibrated correctly it might just be wide enough to accommodate all desired grinds, but why not make it have a wider range than necessary at the coarse end just in case? The repeatability of returning to dialed-in settings also seems imprecise, not wildly so, it may return you to one adjustment away from where you want to be, but nonetheless, it’s not meeting the hype. I would really like to see the adjustment cams really slot into each detent, so you are sure when the slider is at certain position you really know you are where you ought to be. The hopper design, makes removing the hopper a chore, and changing beans a pain. I would really have like to have seen a trap door on the bottom of the hopper, it seems especially relevant to this grinder that claims to be able to switch readily from espresso to filter.

The interchangeable grind bin and "portaholder".

In terms of what the Vario does well, the espresso shots, despite the distribution issues, and despite the apparent presence of shards of bean, were by and large excellent. In a face-off using the same beans, dose, shot brew time and volume, with the Macap M4, there was little to choose between the two (in the cup). In fact, I often thought the shots produced by the Vario grinds were superior. Grind speed was also 1.5 to 2 times quicker than the Macap M4. Grind retention is stellar. It’s a big bugbear of mine with so many grinders, and it’s great to see an implementation that addresses it so well. The usability of the electronic interface is actually pretty-good also, programming new grind times, setting them to the preset buttons is all intuitive and straightforward.

Putting aside the hype, and the performance claims, we’re left with a pretty decent home grinder. It definitely has quirks and flaws, but if you 100% only want one grinder in your home to do espresso and french press / filter, you could do a lot worse. As an espresso-only grinder, for me personally, the distribution issues are a “feature” I do not wish to become part of my routine again. For that reason I will stick with the M4, whose doser demolishes its clumps prior to entering the filter basket. If you intend to use it as a filter-only grinder, I have seen nothing to suggest it is any better than grinders one-third of its price (eg Solis 166 / Starbucks Barista / Bodum Antigua), nor is it any worse. For doing both espresso and filter, yeah, not bad.

I would comment that there seems to be a lot of variance in reported calibration of the burrs. Some users have claimed it will barely do fine enough for espresso, while others like me have observed ample fineness for espresso, but are left wanting at the coarse end. Perhaps it might be wise to hold off to see if these issues are resolved with future production runs.

Overall, I applaud Baratza / Mahlkonig for their bravery and originality, and for what they got right. In this incarnation though the Vario fails to meet expectations on many levels. Perhaps the expectations were too high to begin with.

I’d like to thank Marco for providing the evaluation unit.

Video post to follow…

Home roasting for the masses?

Home roasting of coffee beans is a funny business. Indeed there are many reasons why people take this task upon themselves and some of these reasons hold more weight than others. I know a lot of people state cost as a factor, that buying green beans works out cheaper than commercially roasted beans. That may be true to some extent, but there is often a lack of consideration for factors that reduce the apparent cost benefit, such as the difference in weight between green coffee and roasted coffee and the inevitable roasts that will go wrong from time to time, not to mention the cost in terms of time to do the roasting (how valuable is your time?), and the cost investment of a roaster. So while cost may not entirely hold water, it can be a useful tool to convince a loved one that the introduction of a coffee roaster to the home is a sensible decision. Another factor that is often claimed is the ability to always have the freshest possible coffee. To a certain extent this is true, but many home enthusiasts quickly get over the buckets of gassy crema produced by a one-day post roast bean, and realise that you can have coffee too-fresh. With that realisation, there certainly are options for getting adequately fresh coffee outside of home roasting. Quality and variety of bean is one I actually tend to agree with to a larger extent. At least in Ireland, variety can be somewhat lacking. Hasbean for example offer 50-odd different beans as greens, ranging from CoE winners all the way down to robusta filler. Sweet Marias in the US and kaffeespezialitaet.at in Austria also offer excellent selections of greens, and while many of these are stellar quality greens, home roasters must concede that while they can probably do these beans justice on a good day, the product will probably never be as good as a top quality commercial roaster at the top of his or her game. A reason that is rarely considered or given by someone entering home roasting, but is often given by those experienced in it is knowledge. If you devote the time and attention, you can learn so much about the coffee bean, about particular origins and varietals, how they react to levels of roast, how it influences the cup. Whether by design or not, fresh insight, and a deeper connection to the process is learned.

Modest looks, immodest performance.

My home roasting journey started about 2 years ago, with a small fluid-bed air roaster called the iRoast2 (from hereon referred to as the iRoast). Probably my primary reason for jumping-in was freshness. I knew that the crema created by stale beans tended to be thin and pale, and crema being one of the measures I was trying to improve in my espresso, I took action. This isn’t intended to be a review of the iRoast, but it fell down in certain areas for me, chief of which was the taste. Everything seemed to be marked towards a bitter, burnt flavour, even if the roast was stopped at a medium point. Only being able to roast 150g of green coffee was another nuisance, especially when you consider that weight goes down to about 120g after roasting. If you dose 20g of coffee each time you make an espresso, one roast gives you about 6 cups. The noise from the iRoast was also nothing short of deafening, like 5 hairdryers on the go at once. It was just possible to hear first and second crack, but it was a strain. On the plus side I think my hearing has improved immensely with the routine of this aural workout.

Simple digital display counts down the remaining time.

Upon realising that professional roasts of much lesser beans were resulting in a more pleasing cup, the iRoast got put to the wayside, along with several kilos of green beans. For a number of months, I exclusively used commercially roasted beans, and I had some great cups, and nearly gave up on home roasting. I knew of course that there are better roasters available than the iRoast, but at the time for the price it was the right roaster for me. Had money been no object I would have bought a Hottop roaster, and while I don’t doubt the quality of craftmanship that goes into a Hottop, the high price coupled with the small (although better at 250g than the iRoast) batch size wasn’t ticking enough boxes for me.

The control panel.

In the summer of 2007 the US home roasting community got a new champion – the Behmor 1600, based on a Ronco rotisserie oven, extensively modified by creator Joe Behm for coffee roasting. It was to be a full 1lb drum roaster for only $299. In the interim period much has been said about this roaster, the vast majority positive, though some have questioned its ability to roast a full 1lb as well as  drawing unfavourable comparisons to the programmable Hottop in terms of customising the temperature profile. On this side of the Atlantic, we could only sit back and watch in envy as no european model was available. However, in late 2007 / early 2008 it became apparent that Hasbean Coffee were in talks with Behmor to bring the roaster to market here, with the major obstacle being a long CE certification process.
About 4 months have now passed since Steve Leighton of Hasbean sent me a preproduction model of the EU Behmor for testing. In that time I have roasted more coffee than in the previous 18 months with the iRoast. I’ve roasted pre-blended espresso beans, single origins for espresso and for filter, peaberrys, pacamara, monsooned, small beans and big beans. My aim here, following this obscenely long-winded introduction is to distill my impressions of those 4 months with the Behmor.
Taking the Behmor out of the box, you can’t help but be struck by the aesthetics, and without wanting to be too unkind they are not it’s strongest feature. The Behmor looks somewhere between a microwave oven and a toaster oven, though both longer and shallower than the former. It’s also lighter than it looks. The upside of the reasonable weight should mean shipping costs remain low, but also moving it in and out of a cupboard, or off of a shelf becomes a minor issue. Having been accustomed to pictures of the US version, one obvious difference was also immediately apparent – the door handle. The US handle is more flush with the door, while there is a defined separation in the EU model. This had to be changed in order to meet CE certification. I prefer the looks of the US model, but more importantly the pronounced “jutting-out” of the handle makes it vulnerable to abuse from less than careful delivery men. All in all though the looks don’t bother me, it’s a utilitarian device, form meets functions. I wouldn’t buy a coffee roaster as an ornament for my kitchen.

Open door showing the chaff collector.

The Behmor could (but shouldn’t) be operated by a child. Open the door, remove the chaff collector, remove the bean cage, open the cage, put in the beans, close the cage, insert the bean cage, insert the chaff collector, close the door, select the weight, press start. The roaster will default to profile 1 unless instructed otherwise. This profile delivers 100% power for the entire cycle, and I’ve found it to be the cycle I always try first starting with a new bean. By and large, keeping an eye (and ear) on the progress, and ending the cycle at the desired point will deliver good to great results. You could easily and happily only ever do 1lb, P1 roasts on the Behmor. The one drawback with P1, however, is that it gains an enormous amount of momentum, and you can easily jump from 1st crack straight into 2nd crack, and before you know it you’ve passed your desired roast level. P2 attempts to address this by reducing the power to stretch out the gap between first and second crack. This is achieved, but perhaps not to as great a magnitude as the profile graph might suggest. In roasts where 1st and 2nd ran  into one another on P1, on P2 1st crack tended to be quiet and fleeting, with 2nd appearing about 90s to 2mins later. All of this is somewhat academic, and really is only important the first time roasting a certain weight of a certain bean on a given profile, because with accurate weighing repeated roasts hit 1st and 2nd within very close times.

The bean cage.

Eventually I felt I need a more gentle roast profile, and moved on to try P4 and P5. These profiles gradually build the intensity. My early roasts using a full 1lb on these profiles hit first crack at 20mins in. While I was aiming for a light roast on these particular beans, this kind of length was approaching baked territory. So I simply adjusted the weight from 454g to 350g, and first crack hit about 17mins in. It’s a simple solution, though some might argue unnecessary, the 454g batch came out well. The particular bean will govern whether this is of benefit or not.
On a taste basis, I tended to prefer P1 roasts for beans intended for espresso (again – it depends on the blend profile), whether pre-blended (Hasbean CoE / Brazil Perfeito) or single origin (Brazil Fazenda Cachoeira / Cuba Turquino Lavardo etc) this profile quickly became my go-to profile for espresso. The Fazenda Cachoeira in particular highlighted this for me, on P1 it was nutty, chocolaty, lots of body – superb SO espresso, on P5 though there was a sour note, the nuttiness was diminished, it was all round a poorer cup. The Cuba Turquino Lavardo on the other hand highlighted how good the Behmor could do a roast compared to the iRoast. The Cuban actually was one of the more reliable beans for the iRoast, it coped with the abuse from the iRoast better than most. However, out of P1 on the Behmor, it quickly became clear that the product of the iRoast was only an imitation of what Turquino Lavardo could be – sweet, syrupy, deep, an immense SO shot. Strangely, not something I found with this bean on the iRoast, out of the Behmor, Turquino Lavardo needed a whole week rest to come into its own.

Empty innards.

For french press / filter roasts, I initially had a little difficulty due to overshooting the roast level. I love lots of acidity in my filter coffee, so bringing for example Kenya Gethwumbini into 2nd crack was really muting that. This is one of the down sides of doing 1lb roasts, if you don’t hit your mark the first time, it can be a long week of drinking something you know is not as good as it could or should be. Luckily for me, the Gethwumbini brought to that level was quite nice in a 50:50 with the Brazil Fazenda Cachoeira as an espresso. Subtracting 30-90s from the total roast time of the previous roast in these cases, brought me to where I wanted to be. I also found P5 to be quite useful with these lighter roasts, there was a more pronounced gap between first and second. In the end I had no problem getting to my goal of big, juicy filter coffee bursting with acidity. I knew air roasting like on the iRoast tended to pronounce acidity to a big degree, so I was a little concerned that the Behmor (a radiant heat / drum type roaster) wouldn’t bring out this quality, but other than overshooting the desired roast, this just wasn’t a problem.

The exhaust at the rear.

Moving on to more practical matters, and this is a big one for a lot of people – smoke. The Behmor handles smoke venting quite well, I found 1lb roasts on the Behmor to have a similar if not lesser effect on my kitchen than 150g roasts on the iRoast. For most of the roast in fact, there is no apparent smoke, only the smell of roasting coffee. Once you start heading towards 2nd crack, however, the smoke starts to appear. For me, it means still having to crack open a window, and having to close the door to the hall where the smoke alarm is. Opening the door for quicker cooling, also releases more smoke into the room than leaving it cool with the door closed. The cooling is not immediate, not like a Hottop where the beans drop out of the drum and are cooled very quickly. As you can imagine, opening the door speeds this process somewhat, but releases more chaff and smoke into the room. Once I was familiar with the roast progression of a particular bean, I was able to allow for the slower cooling and keep the door closed.
For the most part I had no problem with the bean cage, in the US a smaller grid cage is offered separately. The standard one I received allowed chaff to exit readily, and only with particularly small beans (Yirgacheffe for example)  or broken beans did a small number of beans fall through the cage. When I say small, I mean less than 1%, a non-issue for me.

The new handle.

Monitoring roast progress on the Behmor is really about audible cues. While you can see into the drum, the colour of the light, as well as the grid of the chaff collector make it difficult to determine roast level on appearance alone. Really it’s about identifying those 1st and 2nd cracks. As there is little noise from the Behmor during roasting (I’ve had PCs that made more noise) this is easy.
The Behmor profiles can be adjusted to a certain degree, though nothing like the programmable Hottop. There is a somewhat convoluted explanation given on how to alter the percentage of the overall roast given to the different legs of the profile, but as far as I was able to ascertain, the first and middle leg durations are set based on the time when the roast is started, and any additions or subtractions of time after the roast has started are added on or taken away from the end leg. A great tool to visualise this somewhat abstract idea is BehmorThing. It allows you to make these additions and subtractions virtually, and see the effect on the profile. The use of the BehmorThing goes far beyond that as a tool for keeping track of all your roasts, using it alongside the Behmor it’s a superb (free) addition to the roaster. My only problem is that it’s Windows only, and having recently migrated to Mac, it’s one tool I sorely miss.

Some technical stuff.

What is and what isn’t the Behmor? The Behmor is practical, affordable, capable of producing excellent results, and importantly capable of roasting a full 1lb of green coffee in one batch. It is a tool to learn about different coffees. The Behmor is not pretty, not fully programmable and not a tool to play at master roaster at home, if that’s what you want this is not the tool for you. It’s not without its flaws, such as the slower than ideal cooling. However, for the amount of coffee I consume on a weekly basis, the ability to roast a full 1lb, coupled with the relative affordability make it the roaster that best meets my needs. If there was some glaring flaw with the beans produced, that would override all other considerations, but there isn’t. You may not fool a seasoned cupper, but it’s definitely capable of producing roasts that do not stand out from professional roasts like a sore thumb, such as those from the iRoast. CE certification has been granted, so it won’t be long until the 220-240V version is available to buy, no final price has been set yet, the current exchange rate fluctuations, particularly the weak pound are playing a role in this, but the hope from Hasbean is that it will come in under £200. If that is achieved it will be a great price for those of us in the eurozone, equating to an outlay of less than I paid at the time for the iRoast against a strong pound, when you consider the programmable Hottop goes for £530 the message comes into sharp focus.
It has been a long time in coming to these shores, there were times in that period where I considered importing the US version and trying to arrange an adequate power supply (there’s a whole issue beyond mere voltage that becomes potentially very important with a roaster – cycles or hertz of the power supplied). I also considered going for the analog Hottop, but I knew I was still going to want to be able to roast greater volumes. There is enough tweakability in the Behmor to allow room for experimentation with particular beans, but there is also enough simplicity, to just start a roast and hit cool at the desired point. Four months in, I haven’t come close to trying out all the permutations the Behmor has to offer, I’ve had some batches that weren’t great, either the roast went too far, I overcompensated and cut it too short, or the profile didn’t suit, but at no time did I feel I couldn’t make the necessary changes for the next roast. Until the time when I feel I cannot make those changes, the Behmor is my roaster.

For a video run-through of a roast from start to finish check out the Behmor Video.

Sincere thanks to Steve Leighton from Hasbean for providing the testing unit.