How far can one go to make a good cup of coffee?

Some time ago, a topic attracted widespread attention and discussion: Can the techniques used by baristas in competitions be applied to daily coffee production? Many people hold a negative attitude. After all, the techniques used by contestants in recent years are mostly expensive or complicated to operate, such as the freeze-grinding technology commonly used in competitions and the subcritical extraction technology used by the 2019 WBC champion.

Nothing is absolute in the world. In pursuit of perfection, coffee makers and coffee shops are constantly trying new technologies regardless of cost. Cole Torode's "Vintage" theory at the 2019 Canadian Barista Competition and George Howell and Will Young's refrigerated storage of green coffee beans also provide both theoretical and practical support for the operation of refrigerating coffee to preserve flavor.

Will Young and his refrigerated coffee beans. Image source: Wall Street Journal

The famous boutique coffee brand Ona has also set up refrigerators in its stores to vacuum seal and refrigerate coffee beans. The new move by the American coffee brand Proud Mary is undoubtedly more... intriguing.

As shown in the picture, Proud Mary installed a refrigerator on the wall and placed the bean silos of three EK43 machines inside. They were connected to the portioners through holes in the bottom of the refrigerator, thus achieving the effect of frozen grinding.

Nolan Hirte, owner of Proud Mary, explains why he did this: "The state of the green beans changes every day, so each batch of coffee we roast will be slightly different; and the state of the roasted coffee beans will also change every day, which will affect the consistency of our products. Since we tried to seal and refrigerate the roasted coffee beans, we found that the state of the coffee beans remained very stable, so we installed such a device, so that we can roast a month's worth of coffee beans in one batch without worrying about the unstable quality over time."

However, due to the lack of precedent, Nolan suffered a lot, replaced three refrigerators, and spent thousands of dollars on trial and error before finally achieving the current effect. Nolan said that he is happy to share his experience with his peers to help them avoid some detours.

Coincidentally, domestic pioneers are also trying to use competition technology to improve coffee quality.

UniUni, which has produced many champions, has introduced a rotary evaporator in its coffee shop Pluto by UniUni to separate the water in the milk, making the milk coffee richer and sweeter.

Kitto Tu Yuehua, who has many years of competition experience and won the CBC runner-up in 2014, also uses a rotary evaporator in his new store Go To Coffee, which is currently in trial operation.

Image source: Allen

Of course, the most important principle of opening a store is to do what you can. When your financial strength is limited and there is room for improvement in other aspects of store management, you should still calculate the input-output ratio and weigh the gains and losses before purchasing equipment. After all, opening a store is about making money.