Fresh Cup Magazine, providing specialty coffee and tea professionals with unique insight into the trends, ideas, products and people that shape their world.
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NINE BARS BY ALEX WYLIE It's always the right time to clean that machine he lifeblood of any coffee shop is the espresso machine. At the Brew Station in Corvallis, Ore., we understand that the machine is the beating heart that keeps us going. If you've ever had the experience of your machine conking out in the middle of the day—whether due to a power failure, the boiler going out or anything equally traumatic—you know the mixture of confusion and panic that can roil through your place and your people. The proper care and maintenance of your machine is crucial to both equipment upkeep and drink perfection. All it takes to ruin a drink is running espresso through unclean portafilter spouts. In addition to monthly technical maintenance, there are small day- to-day things you should do to your espresso machine to ensure that it's running properly and that quality coffee is being delivered to your customers. Here then are some quick, simple and cost-free tips gleaned from our daily routine at the Brew Station, where everything we 50 Fresh Cup Magazine freshcup.com do—including these integral machine-preserving steps—is aimed at producing the best coffee possible. SEASONING AND DIALING IN OK, these steps don't technically qualify as cleaning. But they help you make sure that proper cleaning took place the night before, and they set the table for a day full of top-notch espresso. The first thing I do each day is season the espresso machine— i.e., pull a shot I won't be serving because it may be tainted by some of the leftover residue from the previous night's cleaning. Once the machine is seasoned, it's time to dial in my shots, which can vary from day to day due to factors ranging from the age of the coffee beans to the humidity of the air. Coffee is a very fickle thing. Dialing in the dose, as I call it, is the process of making your coffee perfectly palatable. I first make sure the weight measurement of the espresso, in continued on page 52 COURTESY OF THE BREW STATION