Colonna & Smalls, the Bath coffee shop where Maxwell Colonna Dashwood plies his brews, has more the feel of a seaside art gallery than a cafe. Indeed, the drinks he serves may not always even taste like coffee: «Speciality coffee is a different drink from everyday coffee, because when you roast lighter and use fresher crops, and carefully brew the coffee soon after roasting, you don’t get that familiar toasted, smoky taste which is the flavour people think of as coffee-ish,» says Dashwood.
While running the shop and preparing for the annual UK barista championships, which begin this month in Birmingham (he won in 2012), Dashwood spends much of his time giving barista training.
«The general rule is you need to get around 20% of the coffee physically in the water. If you get less, your coffee will be sour, dry or empty. If you go too far, it will be flat, cardboardy and bitter. It can be a struggle to make perfect coffee at home.»
Maxwell himself seems to have no such trouble. In the dimly lit chamber below the shop, he teases out what he sees as a vastly different drink from each of the six machines. But, despite relishing the separate challenges offered by the technology, he returns always to his primary concern about making specialist coffee – simplicity.
«If you don’t encourage people to find simple ways to make better coffee, you risk making the specialist industry more exclusive. Technology is best when it empowers the human input, enabling people to have more control over what they’re doing.»
ROK
Elegant, industrial, hand-powered espresso maker, rokkitchentools.com, £129
«The ROK is a very nice mechanism; clever and robust. It works very quickly and, although the result of the first attempt is slightly under-extracted, it’s brought out all the fruity flavour in the beans.
It’s better than I thought it would be. It doesn’t give much of a crema on the espresso, but in specialist coffee we don’t really value the crema all that much. It’s associated with thickness and richness but in isolation it tastes thin and bitter.The milk foamer included with the ROK feels like an afterthought, it doesn’t give much foam,and the other complaint is that the machine cools the coffee quite a bit, but that will be a problem with most coffee makers that don’t have their own heat source.»
Verdict Tactile, involving and with pleasant results.
Aeropress
Foolproof, fashionable coffee plunger, nextdaycoffee.co.uk, £21.99
«You can use the Aeropress in a number of ways, but I use it upside down, which is a «full immersion» method. This way, nothing drips through at the beginning. The beauty of the Aeropress is that, because of the added pressure, you can brew for a shorter time and still achieve a good extraction. I’ve used the same coffee as I used in the Chemex and it’s miles better here, more elegant: it’s much harder to mess up with the Aeropress. We use them on our bar, and for 30 quid everyone should give it a go. Its only shortcoming is that the papers don’t create a complete seal, so coffee can slip through the sides of the paper, which can give a grainier, cloudier cup. Other than that I love Aeropresses; I think they’re absolutely wonderful.»
Verdict Quick, easy and with limitless possibilities.
Handpresso
Portable, hand-pumped espresso maker, Wild Hybrid model, fairfaxcoffee.com, £95
«You can’t fit a lot of coffee in here, perhaps seven grams at a push: the minimum dose for espresso. It’s also fiddly to get the coffee in, and it leaked a little water through its pressure switch, which is worrying. The results are promising though. I’ve never used it before, but my first attempt has come out well: it’s got some crema and it’s smooth, with a lot of the sweet, lemongrassy notes we wanted from the beans. The extraction is better here than in the ROK because the water doesn’t cool as much inside this sealed container. It doesn’t look as good as the ROK, and pumping the Handpresso might be a bit more mundane than the ROK’s manual element, but I think this is better. I’m very impressed.
People might be surprised to find out how good this is because they draw a correlation between substantial equipment and good espresso. It’s the reason why filter coffee gets a bad rep: it seems too easy, and good coffee needs hard work.»
Verdict A surprisingly impressive espresso.
Gaggia
Electric kitchen espresso machine with milk steamer, gaggia.uk.com, £295
«Nowadays you’d be unlikely to find a Gaggia in a specialist coffee shop, but they were at the forefront during the early days of espresso and the name still has a huge impact. A lot of people think a fancy machine makes a coffee special, whereas at our end it’s the raw ingredient that’s special, and we want to find the best way to display it. The espresso I’ve made here is very acidic, which means I need to use a finer grind or pull more water through. A machine like this can bring out a lot of volatile flavours, so you need to work hard to improve the result, but the frother is good for reproducing a coffee-shop experience: the harshness of the espresso cuts through the milk. I thought it might struggle to produce thick froth, but it’s better than I expected. An experienced barista could even make simple patterns with the foam.
«You can make a more intense cup of coffee with the Gaggia than with the ROK or the Handpresso, but I would say those two are likely to make more palatable coffee with less effort.»
Verdict Closest to the coffee shop.
Cona
Theatrical, Victorian-style syphon machine, Table Model C, hasbean.co.uk, £90
«This is another full immersion method, which means the water and coffee are in contact in their entirety for most of the brew. We put the water in the bottom bulb and put it over a heat, the air inside the bottom chamber expands which forces the water up top.
«They tell you to have your coffee in the top from the beginning, but I add it later because it means I can control the extraction. We start the timer, let it brew and then take it off the heat. The coffee then filters back into the bottom chamber through the bobble pattern under the glass rod. The glass filter idea is kind of cool – I like it.
«Like the Chemex, you can brew coffee for a lot of people, and if you do it at the dinner table it’s very pretty. However, out of all the machines we’re testing today, this gives the least control. The pressure that builds up inside is incredibly erratic and the heat is tricky to regulate. It’s hard going, but you can achieve good coffee with it.»
Verdict Glamorous, but hard work.
Chemex
Sophisticated glass vessel for filter coffee, 6-cup model, origincoffee.co.uk, £42
«A scientist invented the Chemex, with the idea that there was an optimum angle to achieve the best coffee extraction. Ergonomically, I like it; a lot of thought has gone into the shape of the glass, and the filter papers are purpose-built to remove coffee oils.
«The coffee I’ve made with it is over-extracted; it tastes flat and weak, so we would improve it by using a coarser grind. While that isn’t the fault of the Chemex, without a lot of effort and practice it’s a struggle to use.
«The specialist industry is obsessed with the Chemex because specialists like the craft element, but for me, a craft is only worthwhile if it delivers a better end product. With a ‘pour-over’ method like this you have to put a lot of time and effort into developing a technique. I’d rather just get people to focus on finding interesting coffee.»
Verdict With care and attention, a clean cup.
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