La Marzocco Strada EP party in Norway

When La Marzocco unveiled the new coffee machine Strada at the London WBC Coffee Show a few months ago, I guessed that Oslo must be the first place in the world to have her. As a result, the launch date was still a long way off, and I came across this Strada EP at Tim Wendelboe Cafe without being prepared at all. In shock, Tim patted me on the shoulder and said, "are you coming to the party tonight?" Arrive at six o'clock on time! "wouldn't that be just right?

Tim Wendelboe, a member of Strada's "street team", participated in various internal tests and provided advice. After the end of WBC, La Marzocco decided to actually throw the machine into the bar before delivery-so he got the mechanical version of Strada MP in The Coffee Collective in Denmark, and Tim Wendelboe got the electronic version-and earned it here anyway. This one is the same as the one seen in London. It is a prototype. There is still a lot of room for improvement before the official version.

Review: Strada EP-that is, the Electronic Pump electronic help version, each head uses its own Gear Pump, which is completely independent and unaffected. Through that small button, you can adjust completely manual or four sets of programmed curves, allowing the bar player to adjust the pressure of 0: 12 Bar in real time at any number of seconds.

Tim emphasizes "You can make any coffee tastes like anything with this machine", which can change not only texture, sweetness, acidity and saturation, but also tail rhyme.

Through the LED real-time monitoring of the pressure and seconds of the three cooking heads, almost all eyes are staring here during operation.

On the same day, Tim provided two copies of Single Origin for everyone's experiment: Kenya Mugaga (left) and Guatemala Cielito Lindo CoE#5 (right). The bean grinder was matched with Mazzer Robur quantitative and non-quantitative.

All the people present at the party were heavyweights in the Norwegian boutique coffee industry (except me).

At the beginning of the party, Tim Wendelboe gave a serious account of the situation he faced. If you haven't already read his La Marzocco Strada-first thoughts, here's a few simple things to do:

It is difficult to adjust the cooking curve with the desired taste. The pressure changes in Strada have greatly changed the way we know Espresso, and the same beans can be cooked into a syrup-sweet concentrate or something similar to an elegant and transparent flavor. So the first thing to be sure before making coffee is "what exactly do we want?"

It is impossible to fully reproduce the same cooking curve in manual mode. Because Paddle is very sensitive and can be moved in a small range, it is necessary for a computer to precisely control it under the two factors of time and pressure.

Even if you use a computer to memorize curves, you have to be "super accurate" in filling powder, or everything will fall short.

The perfect curve tested on Wednesday may not work on Saturday, because the exhaust of coffee varies from day to day, and even the same pot may have to change to a completely different brewing curve.

Formula beans are more difficult to master than single beans, probably because each bubble of formula beans is made up of different beans.

Tim spent two or three hours readjusting the curve on the morning of its third anniversary Strada enrichment alone. The experience and knowledge established in the past are negligible in front of Strada. Strada is definitely not for bar players who want to save time and do things cheaply, but requires a lot of experimentation, experimentation and learning.

To sum up the above points, we know that the mechanical version of Strada MP has no commercial use at all, because no matter how much human training can not accurately reproduce the cooking curve, the EP version has become the only choice. But even with the function of memory curve, there are too many irresistible factors and too many factors to control. Tim told me that the ideal way is to start the bar every morning to retry the new curve and expect it to be stable by the end of the day.

Take advantage of the gap and specially ask Tim to demonstrate his adjusted curve, which is about slow rise-flat 7 Bar-slow down to 4 Bar-cut off.

Tim Wendelboe demostrates Strada EP from Riesling.no on Vimeo

This cup of Kenya I drank is probably the sweetest single drink I've ever had, with a sour taste that can be properly displayed. When I tried it myself, I cooked a few cups, and before I drank it, my friends around me said, "well, the color looks good!"I jokingly replied to him." the color is no longer a reference. "sure enough, it tasted so sour that it was nothing like the cup of Kenya that Tim just handed me. Under such circumstances, the question of what is concentration is no longer important. As Tim said, cooked things that look bad often have unexpected delicacies, and the charm of Strada may be here.

At the beginning of the party, Tim mentioned that he had made what he thought was the perfect curve three days ago, giving him a taste unprecedented in Kenya, and then the rhyme was so sweet that he couldn't recreate the Holy Grail a few days later. He concluded: "We have to start from scratch and relearn how to make coffee."

Having said so much, I think I am still very excited. So after years of research and so many people, brewing coffee is still a mysterious black box. The new generation of Strada undoubtedly does not bring answers, but more question marks in front of us. We are all fortunate to be at the forefront of an epoch-making revolution and to leave all dogma behind. This time we enjoy our favorite coffee instead of being told what is the right coffee.

Original address: http://www.riesling.no/2010/08/la-marzocco-strada-ep.html