Morning coffee together at Legal Accelerators
27/11/2020
Specialty coffee nowadays has developed to the point that it covers more than your need for caffeine. And we are truly geeks when it comes to equipment and fully snobs when it comes to explaining what a good coffee should taste like. In our industry, every chain of the supply aims to bring out the best notes & flavors in the bean. And even if it’s all made with passion, you got to have science and technology on your side.
When we received the invitation to be part of Legal Accelerators Conference we thought… how can we, as specialty coffee professionals can be relevant for this niched event and for the people that are part of it? Btw, Legal Accelerators is a brand new online international conference and exhibition dedicated to legal technology and innovation.
So, our Delia (Head Barista, Head Trainer and Head Roaster) decided to take them in our roastery world – the real coffee hub, where she prepared two coffee drinks: cappuccino and brew.
Her tools?
Our La Marzocco KB-90 espresso machine. It helped us extract a perfectly calibrated espresso, while Delia has presented how innovation works in the coffee industry: quantity, temperature, pressure & time.
Next, we brewed smartly using GINA Smart Coffee Brewer by Goat Story – connected to the phone. Gina – the elegant and smart device turns brewing into a digital coffee experience.
Let’s start with the espresso & cappuccino. Delia, your turn now!
The following text is a transcript of Delia’s intervention at the event.
What is so special about La Marzocco KB-90 espresso machine? It has incorporated scales, so I don t have to use a different scale in order to see how much I extract from the coffee. We follow a recipe, we put a certain amount of coffee into the basket and we extract a certain amount of coffee in a given time. We can adjust the temperature and the pressure. In order to make sure I will obtain now the same coffee I had tasted earlier, I will use a scale to see how much coffee I put in.
Recipe: I use 90 grams of coffee and I help myself with a distributor, in order to make the coffee bed flat. When I tamp the coffee, everything is perfectly straight. For the tamper, we will choose a puqpress, an automatic tamper. You can adjust the pressure depending on how much pressure you want on your coffee bed.
Now, we will extract the coffee. I will just put the portafilter and press start. I put my cups here and I wait for it, and the magic will happen. Here, you can see how much time you have to wait for your coffee to be prepared. While the espresso machine is taking care of the recipe, I will prepare the milk. Which milk is good for our coffee? Any type of milk, as long as it is cold, fresh and has a 3,5% fat.
So, we got the coffees, we have 40 grams out in 38 seconds. We use a 6 bar pressure, so we have a longer time for extraction.
For the milk, I am using a steamer. The innovation this machine brought it s its double layer steam wand. So, if the barista, by mistake, touches it, he won’t get burned. When we used the older machines, we had to pay a lot of attention to not touch them, because they were really hot.
When you use it at home, you will see that it is not so hot, but you still have to use it carefully. If you have a good espresso machine at home and you follow the recipe step by step, you respect the brewing ratio, you prepare the milk properly, in order to be smooth and creamy, you will be able to easily prepare one cup of cappuccino or espresso, depending on how you want to drink your coffee.
If you need help to improve your set-up at home, or if you want to get the best cup of coffee but you don t really know how to get it, you can always find us online and leave us a message, on our Facebook or Instagram accounts. Or you can even go in our coffee shops and the baristas will gladly help you.
The best things about this machine is that it gave us the chance to have a better performance, more repeatability, a more steady pressure system (the water flows with greater accuracy), we have a double steam wand, so the baristas won t get burned or injured, and these are only a few of the plenty advantages it has.
We always use the latest technologies because we want to get a greater speed and quality for the process of making coffee. In order to do that, we rely on our machines. And the better the machines are, the better we can do that.
Let s move on to the brew
We have here the Gina Coffee maker. It s said that this in the only device you will ever need at home for making coffee. It has a build-in scale, and it is a 3 in 1 coffee maker. You can prepare cold brew, coffee with cold water. Here, it has a funnel which has an emersion valve. We can use this for a typical V60, we put the coffee and pour the water, and the extraction starts, or we can close it and wait for it to dissolve more and have a longer pre-infusion.
Today, we are brewing coffee from Panama, from Rocky Mountain. The good things is that we have another phone, where we can show you what Gina knows to do. You can install the Gina app on your phone, where you are able to name your device, see how much battery it has left, you can find your recipes or even other s people recipes.
We move on with a pour over. When you press the button for the pour over, the device will ask you about how strong do you want it to be, lighter or stronger, regarding the terms of the body. You can adjust the coffee-water ratio from down below. I will use 1 to 15, because this is what I`m comfortable with. The device tells me now „add coffee grounds and tap next when you’re ready”.
Now, I am grinding the coffee, I have here 15 grams of Panama from The Rocky Mountain farm. Every time you grind coffee, make sure you smell it, because that is the first step in your tasting experience. The smell that you feel now, you will find it later as a flavor in your coffee cup.
We add the coffee grounds. The app says that I added 60 grams, so I have to use 240 grams of water. Now, I hit the „next” button. The device allows me to set the time I want for my brew, and the app even gives me a time recommendation. I press the „brew” button, I add the water, and the device tells me that I added 55 grams of water.
When I add the first pour for the pre-infusion, I make sure that the coffee bed is completely wet, in order to have an even extraction. The water temperature has to be around 85 to 95°, depending on how fresh your coffee is. If you want to extract more, you set a higher temperature. If you want to extract less, you chose a lower temperature. It makes sense, right?
Now, I added 106 grams of water and I still have time to add more. If the water is not pouring through the coffee bed, you have to adjust your coffee grinding profile. You have to grind it coarser, so the water will run evenly through the coffee bed.
Now, we proceed to the final pour, to finish the brew. In the end, the app will tell us how much coffee we extracted.
I added 240 grams of water here, and now the extraction is over. The app now tells me to remove the pitcher, in order to see how much coffee I have. When you brew coffee at home, remember to pay attention to details, to use every equipment you have because it helps you to have a constant way of preparing your coffee and more control over this process.
If you want to get a good coffee at home, the first step is having good coffee beans. For that, I advise you to use specialty coffee, or at least freshly roasted coffee.