Yesterday Jason Dominy invited me to participate in the barista certification course he was leading as "guest instructor":



Below Nicholas (shadowfax) proves that Team HB is not only about espresso:



I spent a couple hours touring the showroom floor. Stopped by Espro to check on their improvement on the venerable French press. Also met Kyra/Kyle from Baratza, Vince from VST. Bumped into Mark Jackson from WholeLatteLove and chatted with the folks at Ceado grinders.

No, but I'll definitely stop by today.

saepl wrote:I heard Breville is coming out with a dual boiler dual PID machine. Any info on that would be interesting

They have an offsite meeting about it; JonR10 says he'll be attending.

romanleal wrote:Completely customizable temperature profile. It won't be released until October. I was impressed. I hope Dan grills them a little harder for info than I did.

I did stop by, and yes, they suffered my nitpicky questions for 20 minutes.

Paul Jones and I also did a quick side-by-side comparison with Metropolis Redline using flat and declining profiles. The results were far, far from conclusive, but the shots were good, which is impressive in itself from a manufacturer showroom booth. As I understood it, it would be generous to describe it as "completely customizable" temperature profile. More like a generally flat, declining, or rising profile, at least based on the description their sales and later engineer provided (it may be oversimplification, but it sounded like a mixing chamber of heat exchanger and incoming cooler water to provide the desired profile). Mark Prince of CoffeeGeek recently published an article on his Rancilio visit and he mentioned the xCelsius; he says he'll publish a follow-up article. I asked if this design would be trickling down the consumer models; the Rancilio representative was non-committal, pointing out that the commercial side of the business was driving all their R&D efforts.

A few quick photos to share... it's been a long day. First one of Randy G. enjoying his 15 minutes of fame:



JonR10 of CoffeeGeek shares the revelation that he's decided to trade his La Marzocco GS/3 for a Faema Legend with Mark Jackson of WholeLatteLove (kind of an inside joke):



Pourovers were all the talk of the convention and the competitions included pourover tastings. Below is a display of prototypes from Hario:



On a related note, Paul Jones, Jon Rosenthal, and I were invited to judge a local "brew throwdown" as part of Jason Dominy's pro-am outreach. Thirteen competitors and some really wonderful coffees. Picking a winner for the $100 take-all prize was not easy.

I also stopped by the Synesso booth and chatted with Mark Barnett. The newer models includes reduced brew pressure profile, similar to a lever with a trailing edge. I arrived just as Jeremy was pulling the last of a very unique single origin floral sweetness fruity bombshell. It was a welcome "surprise" taste profile.

For those who bristle at the disposable NO2 cartridges for the Mypressi TWIST, Stephen O'Brien has a solution in the works. It's not available yet, but will be a pump unit that charges the unit directly. He said it would be compatible with existing units. Sorry, it was pictured in the display below, but not demonstrated at the show.



Tomorrow morning is a "home cafe crawl" with local baristas Paul/Nicholas before heading to the airport.