Almico wrote:People will give up quality for convenience;

That's for sure. Across almost all spectra, from coffee to cars. And there are cultural aspects to it as well. Americans IME are waaay more willing to give up quality for convenience.

Almico wrote:But your premise, that one day the finest grinder will be paired with the finest profiling espresso machine and automatic tamper and yield a final product that is superior to what can be achieved with individual components is fantasy. It's never happened before. I can't see it happening with coffee.

I of course never said anything about the final result of integrating being _better_ than keeping the steps individual. Just that there is much work being done in automating the individual steps at barista quality levels, (as opposed to the superauto level that is so unacceptable to the HB standards.) This is fact, not premise. My premise is that once the automation of individual steps like weight dosing grinders gets past the low end plastic home market, the high end will take notice. And integration will be considered. Integration does not have to be one-button superauto, either. It can be one machine, where you lock in a portafilter to an integrated grinder/tamper. Then move it to a group that extracts to the weight you told it to. While to the right of that, a wand immersed in a pitcher is making real, quality, microfoam that you can make latte art with, to the temperature you preset, and will stop when it's done. That is not a superauto by any stretch. But it is integration of several automated processes into a single machine or station. Oh, and as with auto-weight dosing grinders, it already exists at the low price/plastic construction end of the market, and as with Baratza grinders, reports are that it performs way above it's price. To think that such a thing will not be improved upon and moved upmarket when it does, is absurd, IMHO.

-Peter

The key aspects of a barista isn't the manual process. It is:
1. Dialing in.
2. Figuring out how to compensate when the dial-in strays from the straight and narrow.

Doing that process automatically is beyond what I can see happening now.

Wasn't it Perger who said that in the future a "Barista technician", sort of a Nietschian Uber-Barista, will dial in uber-super-autos, and maintain it, while the Customer service Barista will just press a button? He said at a OOB LM event.

AssafL wrote:Wasn't it Perger who said that in the future a "Barista technician", sort of a Nietschian Uber-Barista, will dial in uber-super-autos, and maintain it, while the Customer service Barista will just press a button? He said at a OOB LM event.

Yes, I attribute that to him as well. Though when I read his baristahustle, I tend to read more the stuff about technique and extraction science, and skim over his philosophical musings about the future.

-Peter

While I agree the barista is currently necessary for dialing in espresso, if say Intelligentsia started supplying the next generation connected superautos to their wholesale customers and for every batch they dialed it in on that same machine, they could tell the machine what the goal is and it could automatically set the brew temperature and pressure and then dial in the grinder to match the supplied specs. they might not match the quality of Go Getum Tiger, but I'd guess that it might make the quality of the espresso at those outlets drinkable. Which would in my experience be a large step up from what most of my local shops with a La Marzocco and a Robur can provide. It also gets rid of the lazy/untrained barista dropping the portafilter on the ground and then picking it up and using it without washing it.

The machine would have to request to be refilled when the coffee got really low and then require scanning the barcode on the bag of coffee before it would open. It could also refuse to allow adding old coffee and could automatically dump coffee the roaster deems to old to brew as espresso. it will happen. Shop grinders are about to get connected so the wholesale supplier knows when it's time to send more coffee and how much to send based on the last weeks usage. If the average shop are willing to allow being helped, automation will help the average shop get better.

Ira

The Barista becomes those guys who man those quad-Pod self-checkout counters at the supermarket. You know, the one who gets the silly customer to find the code for zucchini. An operator of a vending machine.

Drop the price of coffee or up the margin. Lavazza already has those awful machines at the train stations. In the future they may be a bit better.

Why need a coffee shop (except for wifi)? Maybe replace iPhone batteries?

Customers pay money to get a feeling the Barista like and care about their job. Starbucks is good. The better coffee shops are better at it. If the perception of expertise goes - why would people pay?

The Starbucks machines are pretty much this, aside from manual steaming, aren't they?

We can argue all day about whether we like their coffee or not, but we can all agree that their staff and equipment produce remarkable consistency...

Yes, but without having a go at one with decent coffee, it's hard to know how capable they are. Given the quality of what comes out, the actuality stability, adjustability and consistency might not be very important as long as they get the volume correct. I'd guess 90% or more of their customers would be just as happy if it just popped out of a machine with their name printed on the cup, especially if it made the line move faster.

Ira

I am looking at the Decent Espresso and it is nearly there. Sans the grinder and puck prep - of course...

To get "third wave" quality (which I take to mean with a consistently good result - be it ristrettos, normales or lungos) - I don't think brew formula (EBF) is enough. Quality of coffee is a result of both EBF and extraction yield (EY). So if you over extract or under extract - your "perfectly consistent" coffee is no more.

I have toyed with the concept of figuring how much water the puck absorbed. Currently an intellectual exercise since my experiments were unsuccessful. The problem is that the puck absorbs water, part of it dissolves, and ends up in the cup. So you have too many parameters to solve the equation (without measuring TDS which is too cumbersome and not easy to automate accurately).

I now wonder - given Decent espresso's ability to detect puck saturation (they call it "end of preinfusion") if that can be used to deduce if the puck is properly wetted - or properly prepared. While not a direct measure of TDS - it may be good enough to predict a "good" pour (or EY).

Eg: assume a properly ground and prepared puck always absorbs 10ml water before it saturates, perhaps if Decent detects that pressure started rising too soon (e.g. after 5ml) then it may be that the grinder needs to back off a notch - or that if channeling happens (too many ml water too quickly) that means WDT is required - or slower pre-infusion?

There's room for everybody in the realm of coffee.

In auto racing... If you've driven a proper DSG box, you know the manual is kind of like 60's muscle cars today: Fun to drive and look at, but pretty much any current euro family sedan is going to lap you at the track.

I have driven them. A DSG is a manual, regardless of who commands the shift (computer or person). For the purposes of sports cars, if it has a torque converter, it's an automatic, even if you put it in manual mode and have to shift it manually. And if it does not have a torque converter, it is manual, even if you set it to shift for you. The distinction is in the coupling. Fluid coupling = automatic. Disc/clutch coupling = manual, even if there's no pedal, as with DSG.

DSG was invented so that driving enthusiasts did not have to suffer the drawbacks of a torque converter, to get automated shifting. Yes, a proper DSG set in sport mode can shift faster than a person with pedal and an H-gate. But you're talking maybe, maybe, one second total (and that's being generous) per lap. If you've ever been racing at the amateur level like I do, or advanced hot lapping, you are doing well just to make all your laps within one second of each other. A good driver in an old school manual will run 20-30 seconds a lap faster than a beginner in the same car with a DSG. Skill matters a LOT on the road course...

And getting back on topic, as it also does with espresso.

-Peter