We stumbled across the following article on the internet and found ourselves in agreement from the first word until the last. An extract from the article appears below.
'The WBC standards for temperature stability are quite precise,[i] but no mention is provided for the history or importance of temperature stability in the production of espresso. There is an assumption that the holy grail of espresso machine manufacture is the ability to precisely maintain a specific temperature throughout the extraction process tailored to a chosen espresso blend. Not withstanding that a blend of beans, by its very nature, may require a plurality of extraction temperatures to achieve optimal results, the Italian engineers with whom I have worked take it for granted that a flat line temperature profile is not what they are looking for. To test an Italian machine to this arbitrary standard seems a little problematic.
Even tamping is a bit of a curiosity. The importance of tamping among the Italian professionals seems to have gained in importance as training materials for machines started showing up in English. One would think that tamping should be an obsession in a country in a country with well over 200,000 espresso bars where being a barista is considered a valued profession; if tamping was the key to ones livelihood, baristi would carry tampers around in much the same way that chefâ s carry there knives. Tampers would be handed down from one generation of barista to the next . . . .but they donâ t
When Luigi Lupi (an expert barista working with Elektra at SCAA 2005) was approached by a small contingent of consumer members, he was quizzed as to the role tamping played in his profession. He shrugged and produced the same quality shot he had produced moments earlier without tamping at all. Speculation in response to his effort ran the range of commentary, from simply crediting his experience to whether or not he had secretly tamped the coffee out of view in some stealth-like manner before mounting the filter.
It was the former.
The history of these assumptions is hard to track down. When presenting machines to Starbucks in early 1992, their technical department took substantial space, was full of machines from virtually every manufacturer and staffed by two ex-baristas with no training in engineering.
Even though most of us like to think we have risen above the mass market appeal of Starbucks, the corporation that had developed the gold standard for promoting espresso as we know it in the United States was also responsible for driving much of what we assume to be true of espresso machine standards.
This from a company that, at the time, employed no engineers and had no understanding of the process of pre-infusion, temperature profiles or the importance of metal composition in the constructions of espresso machines.
[i] WBC Procedure for the Measurement of Brewing Water Temperature in Espresso Coffee Machines
Gregory Scace, Barry Jarrett, Bill Crossland, John Sanders
6.2 Brew Temperature of a Brew Cycle:
Specification: The brew temperature shall describe the thermal conditions of water immediately upstream of the simulated coffee cake using two terms, the average brew temperature observed during the brewing cycle, and the one-shot stability. Brew Temperature shall be expressed in degrees plus or minus the stability (for example â 201.5 ± 0.8). In the case of manual data collection, the average brew temperature shall be the temperature observed most often during a specific simulated brew cycle, ignoring temperature observations during the first three seconds of the cycle. Ignoring results during the first three seconds negates the effect of thermometer lag on the result. The one-shot stability shall be one half of the difference between the highest and lowest observed temperatures over the brewing period, negating temperature readings in the first three seconds. For automatic data collection, the average brew temperature may alternatively be the average of all temperature readings during the brew cycle except for those occurring in the first three seconds. The one-shot stability may alternatively be two times the standard deviation of the temperature observations, ignoring observations occurring in the first three seconds.'
A hearty "amen" is all we have to add.
We're putting our money where our mouth is in supporting lever machines to the hilt, and their temperature profiles are about as far away from flat as the Himalayas are. Into the bargain the capital outlay is less, they are more reliable, easier to repair and to calibrate. They do demand more from the barista, but we seemingly live in an age where we've never had more formally trained baristas, so that really shouldn't be a problem should it? If you think levers are intimidating give us a call and arrange to come and try a lever machine. With some basic training you'll be pulling espresso of a quality you never dreamt was possible. There's something magical about levers.
For us coffee is firmly an art, not a science, and it is the elusive elements that continue to defy definition that attracted us to establish Londinium Espresso back in 2004. The magical thing about coffee is two coffee roasters can be given the same green beans, and possibly even the same machine, and produce coffees that taste quite different. This is the magic of coffee, and it ensures a bright future for a multitude of small, local coffee roasters each with their own distinct roasting style.
To advocate one 'right' way of roasting and preparing coffee is opening yourself up to ridicule in our opinion. Gourmet coffee is one of the final frontiers that continues to evade being quantified, measured, and reduced to a series of 'tick-boxes' that the multi-nationals can then deploy across the globe with vast economies of scale. Like many things in life, the enjoyment you derive from an experience is not purely objective, it is heavily influenced by the environment in which the experience occurred. The same is true of coffee; the surroundings need to be something you appreciate, the baristas need to be friendly, and a whole raft of other factors that contribute to your enjoyment.
As low cost, mass produced goods have become ubiquitous a curious thing happened. We have begun to seek and prize unique hand crafted goods more than before. Until fairly recently hand made goods were often derided for not being uniform and homogenous. The wheel seems to be turning, and unique individual objects made by real craftsmen are being sought. It is apparent in high end exclusive luxury goods, but it has also permeated throughout modern society I think, and at the most accessible end of this change we have hand roasted coffee that conveys the unique attributes of the roaster's vision for how they would like the coffee to be experienced.
It worked with hamburgers, but the humble coffee bean is a beast with seven heads that continues to defy the efforts of the corporation to standardise it. Long may this continue.