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The Clover, the hottest toy in the coffee world, may get picked up by the world's largest coffee chain. The Clover is capable of producing some stellar brews and (of course) some lackluster ones. I've had both from well-trained professional hands. For the largest chain, this move makes a lot of sense: mechanical brewing that gives a concentrated amount of face-time with the customer. While the Clover does require training, I'm sure that it can produce brews up to the quality standards of said chain with a bare minimum. Not the full potential, mind you, but that isn't what mass marketing has ever been about.
As one astute commenter notes, if the chain picks up the Clover for all of its stores, it will introduce a new, potentially quality-increasing product to a large audience, which then will switch (statistically speaking) to the independent shops. Seems good for all.
However, my thought in general, not just about the Clover in particular, is that the introduction of mechanized technology into the equation does not make sense until the fundamentals of manual technology are at least understood, if not mastered. A Clover can produce a fine brew, but I've had just as good from a Chemex in regards to cleanness and just as good from a vac-pot in regards to taste clarity. In fact, I prefer almost all manual methods over commercial scale drip brewing (its that scale factor that gets me) and many over (shock! horror! gasp!) espresso brewing.
No doubt technology improves over time, but as Wendell Berry might say (if he were a Coffee Geek), the change from manual to mechanical isn't an improvement, it is a whole 'nother category. Technological improvement from manual methods involves redesigning carafes, fiddling with filters, and lots of training and cupping.
This isn't to say that mechanical brewing methods don't require skill: they do, even though an executive at the large aforementioned chain said even a "monkey can pull a double-shot" (don't get me started!). Pulling a shot of espresso is easy, pulling a decent (not to mention excellent) shot is doggedly hard. Manual methods, though, require a different skill and knowledge set than mechanical means. I think that, for the future of BFC&T at least, manual skills are what will set independents apart from the big boys, whether it is chains or grocery tin-cans.
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Hi Russ- Luke from 21st Street... nice seeing you guys the other night at Baristmachristkwanzakkuh ;) It was a good time.
I was wondering what other Clovers you've had a chance to try, besides ours in the Strip District, given that there are so few on the East Coast. Also, what coffees have you enjoyed most and what coffees were "lackluster". I'm curious and although we certainly have customer favorites we sell quite a variety of coffees every day.
Regarding tech improvements, and being an engineer myself, I find the Clover to be an invaluable tool for me and my staff as we continue to learn about the coffee that we serve. What it does is lock down time and temperature variables for us at setpoints we choose so that we can quickly and repeatedly give the same coffee the same treatment over and over again. We can then quickly switch over to another, completely different coffee, and apply a completely different set of variables repeatedly.
I'm not here to say that the Clover makes coffee better than a well executed chemex, press or vac pot, but I also wouldn't say that either of those methods necessarily produce a better tasting brew than what comes out of the Clover.
What I will say is that we can turn out truly excellent coffees with precision in quick succession- fresh to order. We used to do press pots to order in our old shop, but you simply cannot keep up with the type of volume we do to order without your press pot quality falling apart (imagine one of those guys on a talent show trying to keep all the plates spinning at the same time without breaking one). If you were to brew in a press and then put it into a carafe to hold temp I'm sure you would notice a dropoff in quality after even 20 minutes of holding time. In addition, there would still be more waste and I'm positive I wouldn't know that my water temperature and steeping time were accurate to the second and degree, and if I plunged too fast or too slow.
From a business owner's perspective, another advantage to the Clover is that we can manage all of this without creating a lot of dishes and without making folks wait a long time for their drinks.
Don't take this reply as a knock on your original post- I'm just really excited about the Clover and what we can now do with our coffee programs. Not all tech improvements create an improvement in quality, but what I've found with the Clover is that we've simultaneously improved quality while increasing our speed, but the quality is never sacrificed for the speed. I look at the advancements made in brewing with the Clover the same way that I look at the improvements made in any PID'd semi auto espresso machine available today- because it locks down variables you shouldn't have to worry about. I can't see anyone arguing that it's a good thing to have your water temp fluctuate by +/- 10 degrees throughout the day. I've worked in both worlds, temperature surfed, etc, but now that I'm here I'm never going back :)
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