Technology

Coffee Roasters Australia’s Phantom triumph

It’s one thing to design a product from scratch and bring it to life, but to have every piece of material made and manufactured on Australian soil is a feat few businesses boast, due to cheaper overseas labour and manufacturing costs.  For Coffee Roasters Australia (CRA) Technology’s Mark and Alana Beattie, the achievement was challenging, but a project they were determined to see through. “It’s quite strange that Australia is considered one of the market leaders of coffee consumption, innovation, and barista-made coffee, yet we don’t manufacturer many products,” Mark says. “We saw it as a real challenge, and it was.”
Read More

How Satake sorts the good beans form the bad

In the movie Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory, golden chocolate eggs are placed on an eggdicator scale to determine if they’re good or bad. Good eggs are shipped out. Bad eggs go down the garbage chute into the incinerator. Even spoilt child Veruca Salt is sent down the garbage chute. When it comes to separating good green or roasted beans from bad, the same theory applies using Satake’s range of optical sorters.  Sid Jain, Satake Australia’s Optical Sorting Sales Engineer, says having a clean bean is the difference between a good flavour in the cup and an excellent one. 
Read More
Coffee science

Proteins with purpose: why milk curdles and how to avoid it

If you regularly make soy coffees for your customers, you have probably noticed that soy milk is often harder to work with than dairy milk – it tends to curdle more in coffee, especially when steaming hot. With some coffees it behaves well, with some it doesn’t.  The delicate protein structures in milk are to blame for the curdling effect.  Proteins are long, folded chains of amino acids. Humans only use about 20 different amino acids, and they can be linked after one another in any order. Most proteins contain hundreds of them.
Read More
Telemetry

Service Sphere’s top five benefits of telemetry

The internet has made it easier than ever to stay connected, and telemetry allows café owners and operators to take full advantage. Telemetry, a system which monitors an espresso machine’s functions and performance via an internet connection, makes it possible for machine operators to keep track of how machines are being used – in real time and remotely.
Read More

Puretec perfecting water

When it comes to achieving the perfect water recipe to complement coffee, it’s a careful balancing act. Mineral concentrates, chlorine, and alkaline have a large impact on the taste profile of the water and overall coffee outcome depending on which state of Australia you live.  Over the past few years, the coffee industry has seen a large uptake in filtration systems to help purify the water responsible for extracting flavour compounds from beans. This includes reverse osmosis and ion exchange systems that extract ‘the nasties’. But more often than not, Puretec National Food Service Account Manager Simon Read says it comes with compromise.  “Filtration models are typically a double-edged sword. It’s a balance between looking after your customers and producing a great-tasting coffee, or protecting your equipment – it’s one or the other, and that to us, it is not good enough,” Simon says. 
Read More

Service Sphere’s top 10 troubleshooting tips

Your machine has thrown a wobbly in the middle of service. There’s a line of customers outside your hole-in-the-wall window ready to grab their coffee-to-go, and docket orders keep piling up. This is not the time, you think. You should always have a backup plan in case of a fault, but before you hit panic mode, let’s run through my list of the top 10 common faults found in espresso machines. Nine times out of 10, faults are a result of poor maintenance, care, and user error. So before you blame the machine and call a technician, let’s see how you can work through some common problems and get your machine back working in tip-top shape. 
Read More

A Storm’s brewing

The start to the Astoria Storm release video mimics that of any major motion picture: background music, landscape pan and slow motion movements of its star protagonists: 2017 World Latte Art Champion (WLAC) Arnon Thitiprasert, 2015 WLAC Champion Caleb Cha, and 2016 World Coffee in Good Spirits Champion Michalis Dimitrakopoulos. These champion baristas from three different walks of life use three different modes of transport to get to their destination: Caleb rides a bike, Arnon walks with his headphones on, and Michalis drives a yellow Fiat. 
Read More

Eversys’ Cameo appearance

When 2012 World Brewers Cup Champion Matt Perger made a speech about his involvement in the development of Eversys’ new machine at Host Milan 2017, he spoke about the consumer mentality of ‘guilt’ that harmed the sales of 1950s US brand Betty Crocker.  The promising product took a dive when home cooks were unable to admit to partners they baked a cake from a packet mix instead of taking the time to make the product from scratch. Matt told audiences that the coffee industry had experienced a similar ‘guilt trip,’ with industry members conditioned to look at a superautomatic machine and think of “low quality”, and a “non-player” in the market, which has held back consumer support.
Read More
Coffee Science Lab

Tapping into water filtration

Baristas strive to control each element of coffee production, from processing methods and roasting through to grind consistency and temperature profiling. Water is another element not to forget. If you use the water straight from your tap and let it run through a coffee machine, chances are that rare, expensive Panama Gesha you’ve just added to the menu will be lacking in the flavour profile it deserves. That’s why most cafés implement water filtration systems – to control water’s impact on coffee flavour and maximising the lifetime of the espresso machine at the same time. 
Read More