Originally a car dealership, the Rochester store is still called Spot “Chevy”. It somehow manages to feel comfortable rather than cavernous, despite the size. This store doubles as a gallery space for many artists, and they have lots of room for doing music acts as well.
I drove out to Rochester to do some Fetco calibration, some Marzocco maintenance, and chat with their managers and baristas a little. One of their strongest baristas is going to Norway for a few weeks; hopefully he can make his way to the Nordic Barista Championship to check that out, maybe drink a lot of Aeropress'd coffees? So jealous! That lecturer list is impressive. I've thought for years that Northern Europe might be the place for me, and after finding out about their coffee culture I am even more convinced.
Fetco calibration went pretty smoothly. I talked to Jessica, Spot Rochester's awesome manager, about what I'm doing with our grinding and brewing parameters, and she seems sure that it wouldn't be a problem to train everyone up to different grinding practices if we decide to do that. So that's cool.
I think I want a “naked” Fetco basket of some kind so I can watch the brew cycle and check the temperature in-basket. I know I've got some old baskets kicking around in storage somewhere; I also might just see if I can disable or trick the sensor that requires the basket-magnet.
My TDS meter and scale, they comfort me.
It's a bummer that Fetco output rarely matches the electronic controls. It's stable, so all you have to do is measure the water and reset until you hit it right, but, still. Also a bummer that some of the parameters you can change have relatively broad settings—like only being able to control brew time in 30 second intervals. My respect for these auto-drippers has gone up a lot since I've adjusted them, and thought about how consistent they are compared to manual methods; it seems like just a little more work could allow them to make a really awesome cup. Forget Clovers & Trifectas: why aren't we seeing really good, highly customizable 1-cup auto-drippers? It seems like you could make a fairly compact machine that could compete with a pour-over rail system.
Spot Dog! I hear he had a sibling at Elmwood who was KIDNAPPED and probably still sitting in someone's garage now.
While in the store I also discover a stash of weird parts to add to the Sacred Linea Graveyard I'm constructing in Buffalo. I think I might up my estimate to 2 working machines I can cobble together, but we'll see. As soon as I get through Elmwood's Art-fest I'm launching into project Frankenlinea: from a few machine-corpses I want to patch up an old brass-group 4-head and totally refurbish it, with PID controls. I'd also like to see if I can split the 2 group boilers so they both have their own pump, allowing faster use without compromising pressure. In a kind of morbid, masochistic way, I am looking forward to descaling the boilers.
Jessica & I finalized some plans for this coming Saturday, August 21st: at 10am we are going to hold a home-brewing demonstration, “1 coffee 5 ways”. We're going to take a coffee—maybe the Guatemala Limonar?--and brew it in a Mr. Coffee-type devise using their dosing instructions (haven't decided if we should grind the beans a day or two in advance just to really skew it towards realistic). Then we're going to taste that by comparison to French Press, Chemex, Aeropress, and Toddy. That might be a bit much, so if things look crazy we'll probably chop the Aeropress. My goals are legion! Educational goals: get people to realize a.) preparation changes the flavor of the same coffee, b.) brewing well at home is not hard or expensive, and c.) please grind fresh. I also want to raise the public awareness of Spot as a center for all things coffee, and for that matter raise the public awareness that there ARE interesting things going on with coffee. And while I'm at it, maybe sell a few Chemexes or presses, a few bags of coffee.
Sadly, I had to jet back to Buffalo to take care of work stuff there, no time to check out any other Rochester cafés. There seems to be a growing coffee scene here that I'd like to get more familiar with—a few months back I did a lightning café-tour with some other Buffalo baristas, and we noticed some good things going on. I don't think Rochester's ever done a barista jam; organizing one of those might be a goal of mine before too long.
That's it for now! Grinders & brewers doing up some delicious coffee, cutest Marzocco humming along, and I am heading back to Nickel City.
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