jesse wrote:I won't touch pour-over anymore unless I have prior experience w/ the barista and know they're capable, and even then, only if the shop isn't busy.

If you know how to program a Fetco, the cups are really fantastic. Consistently fantastic.

In Montreal, every cafe was about pourover and different filter coffee devices from french press to syphon to Chemex for a couple of years. Everyone would sneer at batch brewing at that time. And, eventually, even the coolest "third wave" cafes started praising the consistency of Fetcos vs handmade pourover. Many places don't serve pourover or mostly serve batch brewed coffee now.

I've had some pretty bad V60s and some amazing ones. So far, the batched brewed coffee I've had has been very good most of the time. I've never had an amazing cup from a Fetco so far though.

I don't like my 2 liter pour over thermos after 1-2 hours. But a thermos brewed and stored 4 hours while camping is good, fades fast once oxygen hits.

Is a vacuum pot one that is vacuum insulated or does it prevent oxygen from mixing with the coffee as coffee is drained??? I think the latter is needed...

RyanJE wrote: Rao even stated recently in his blog that its rare to get a properly made pour over. In fact, they are quite the pain to make right.

In his opinion..the guy also seems to hate chemex and natural process coffee lol

True. I know nothing of the chemex personally but echo his thought about bad pour overs. I have frequented about every great coffee roaster in the Bay Area and have the same experience. The great pour overs are few and far between. The batch brews I have had have been more consistent.

Anyway, off topic sorry!

sorry to hear that! guess if the coffee shop doesn't want to invest effort into making a good pour-over, they should not sell it and customers benefit from batch brews..but then, it is also hard to make a good espresso and even harder when frothing milk, isn't it, so why not use a superautomat for consistent and average output..more off-topic

I'm a little disillusioned these days with the consistency of both pourovers and batch brews in the cafes I've been going to in the west coast coffee meccas. For the consumer, an advantage of batch brews is that it's often possible to have a small sample first. At least if I don't like it, I don't have to order one. I get why batch brews should, in theory, be more consistently successful, but in my experience, they're not that drinkable most of the time. I wonder if the ones I've liked most have been fresher than the ones I haven't? I've had a couple of outstanding batch brews recently, but the next I tried in the same cafes were way off. I'd think more cafes would use Clever or Bonavita drippers. Maybe the best that comes from them is not quite as delicious in a lot of cases, but the cafes I go to that serve them rarely give me something I regret having ordered.

In Oz, where batch brewing has waxed and waned without the history of the US, it typically is only slightly cheaper than a fresh brew and often tastes muted and boring. From enquiring with owners and staff, I don't think there's as much time spent dialling in when compared to the US even for fresh brews. Espresso is the big earner here.

In the interest of reanimating this discussion, let's consider this topic in the context of a purported game-changing batch brewer like the Voga.

Seems like there are two possibilities here:

1) They developed it with the understanding that the coffee's only gonna be fresh for ~30 minutes but assume any shop who can afford one is doing the kind of volume to warrant it

or

2) There's some other trick to keeping coffee fresh outside of controlling temperature and exposure to oxygen.

I used to manually brew directly into a zojirushi, leaving no headspace, and 2 hours later the coffee had degraded enough that I started just brewing in the office.

Edit: Worth considering that my expectation for a coffee I dialed in over the course of a couple days and then brew more or less to perfection is going to be significantly higher than for whatever is coming out of an airpot. I need to revisit the thermos experiment with this in mind. But I don't own one anymore. Could someone assist and report back?

jesse wrote:In the interest of reanimating this discussion, let's consider this topic in the context of a purported game-changing batch brewer like the Voga.

Seems like there are two possibilities here:

1) They developed it with the understanding that the coffee's only gonna be fresh for ~30 minutes but assume any shop who can afford one is doing the kind of volume to warrant it

or

2) There's some other trick to keeping coffee fresh outside of controlling temperature and exposure to oxygen.

I used to manually brew directly into a zojirushi, leaving no headspace, and 2 hours later the coffee had degraded enough that I started just brewing in the office.

Just curious. How could you tell the coffee degraded after 2 hours in the zojirushi??

It would been interesting to hear from cafe workers or owners of fetco brewers that use the insulated pots.

RyanJE wrote:Just curious. How could you tell the coffee degraded after 2 hours in the zojirushi??

i didn't mean scientifically. totally subjective assessment.