Your espresso machine is a pivotal part of your business. So get the right one and look after it. Food &Beverage Today asked two Wellington coffee gurus, Nick Clark and Michael Howes, for their advice.

Clark is a director of Flight Coffee, partner at city café, Memphis Belle and 2010 Barista of the Year finalist. Howes is head technician for coffee machine maintenance company, Espresso Ninja.

With so many different brands, the first thing is to pick the right machine.

They all vary in usability, reliability and looks, says Clark. “The biggest thing is to ask, is the size suitable for your working space and coffee output? And how many groups [group heads on the coffee machine] should you have? Most cafes use three, though even small, busy cafes can manage with two groups. Generally two baristas would be needed to manage a four-group machine but a super talented barista could do it.”

Once you have selected a machine, regular maintenance is required. Clark says the recognised service period is every six months, or every four months for cafes doing 400 to 600 coffees a day. Most suppliers provide these regular checks.

In the café, ongoing cleaning is critical. Cleaning the groups has the biggest impact on coffee quality and taste – make sure the backwashing is done daily, says Clark.

“As well as the daily cleaning with chemicals, regular back flushing without chemicals during the day helps, run clean water through to get rid of the grounds.

“Once a week, at least, take out the dispersion screens and soak them in the backwash chemical, it helps the area you can’t get to with the daily backwashing.

“Ensure the steam wand is cleaned and purged after every use otherwise milk starts to build-up on the wand and gives a taint.

“Also I commonly notice excess grinds around the grinder, particularly with spouter handles, and when the grounds are tamped these stick to the spout and get mixed into the coffee as it pours.

“Another thing you see is baristas using just one cloth to wipe everything during the day; the steam wand, the porta-filter – so the cloth is touching dirty grounds, then the milk. It’s cross-contamination and affects the flavour.”

Grinders

Michael Howes says many cafes don’t appreciate how essential a part the grinder plays.

“There is a trend towards automatic grinders but few models can achieve the quality level a busy café demands and they are expensive. The best have conical blades with slow rotation so the coffee doesn’t overheat while grinding. This also ensures the flavour is extracted evenly from the grinds.”

Grinders also need adjusting as temperatures and humidity fluctuate.

“When it’s really humid, two to three adjustments over the day are required, as coffee beans are quite hygroscopic. These usually occur around mid-morning, midday and late afternoon.”

Grinder blades need replacing regularly, on average every six months, he says.

“As they wear down they start crushing instead of cutting so you don’t get the oils and flavours of the coffee and extraction is difficult. Instead of a full-bodied espresso you get something really thin that won’t hold its crema.”

Supplier

Selecting the right coffee supplier is also important. Good coffee roasters provide espresso machines, training and servicing.

In Wellington, we’re all different in the way we do business, interact with our customers, and make coffee, says Clark.

“For a café choosing their supplier it will depend where they are, what style they want, how they want to run their business.

“You find out about their reputation, customer service, quality and consistency. If your machine breaks down and it’s providing most of your margins then the servicing has to be on call, 24/7. Some bars are serving coffees at 2am, and if their machine breaks down it has to be fixed. It’s not just about dropping the beans at the door and saying, ‘see you next week’.”

Specialist and single cup machines

The trend to promote single origin coffees has led to the development of new machines such as the Clover 1s, introduced to Wellington’s Customs Brew Bar, and now in use at Coffee Supreme Woodward Street.

The commercial single-cup brewer, described as a breakthrough by its Seattle manufacturer, The Coffee Equipment Company, is a highly sophisticated approach to simple brewing concepts, says Coffee Supreme’s Benn Crawford.

“The Clover is a cross between a vacuum pot and French press, and its beauty is that every stage is programmable so anyone can operate it. The most difficult part for the operator is stirring the water to ensure the water contact is even.

“Thus people who don’t know how to make coffee can provide consistent coffee in a busy retail shop.”

Crawford says the water volume, brew time and temperature can all be set, according to how much coffee is needed. “The ‘barista’ simply needs to dose, grind and place the grounds in the brew chamber, set the cup size and brew time and press brew.

“We can also flush the brew group between coffees so it doesn’t affect the coffee if we are making different variety for each cup.”

Such features make the single cup machine ideal for stores focusing on single origin coffees, enabling customers to choose from any coffee in the store.

“The machine has elegance, it’s clean, but it does take the art away from making coffee; that passionate individual innovation of the barista that makes the difference. All the innovation with the Clover is with the engineers who made it,” adds Crawford.

Nevertheless, Crawford believes his store is fortunate to have acquired one of the few Clovers in the country. In 2008 the Coffee Equipment Company was purchased by Starbucks who immediately stopped making the machines.

“The Clover served a purpose as introducing another level of looking at what makes a good coffee.”

The “next” machine to look out for, suggests Crawford, is the Trifecta, a single cup “theatrical” machine designed by Bunn and in use in Coffee Supreme’s Melbourne store.

When the brew cycle is running the cylindrical Trifecta is illuminated and the turbulence provides the theatre. After the tube fills with water the coffee is agitated with an air jet to facilitate extraction. It’s like a swirling vortex, it’s pretty cool to watch, says Crawford.

Meanwhile at Customs Brew Bar, barista Ralph Jenner is getting his buzz from a Slayer Espresso machine.

“There’s a cool thing you can do pre-infusion, and that’s wetting the grounds before pressure is applied. By saturating the coffee before you add the pressure it provides a softer extraction and it’s easier to pull the flavours from the coffee.

“It’s a similar concept to plungers and filters, where that first touch of water makes the coffee bloom, where you get the really true flavour. It’s an important part of brewing coffee.

“Because we do single origin coffee that’s the reason we have this machine, to pay the coffee special attention. The customers respond, they really notice the difference,” he adds.

Blackbelt beats wastage

It’s typical Kiwi ingenuity, provides consistency and saves thousands of dollars a year in waste coffee. We’re talking about the ‘Blackbelt’ grinder dosing control system, designed by Matt Gray, formerly of Espresso Ninja.

Memphis Belle barista, Nick Clark says the device runs on time and motion. “It’s not automatic but it does essentially what a $5000 automatic grinder does and it works on 99 per cent of grinders.

“We can set it to however long we want to grind the coffee for each cup and adjust our grinder accordingly.

“Once dosed there’s no overflow, no waste – you just tamp it. So your coffee is fresh every time and it provides consistency amongst all your barista staff.”