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Taking coffee to a new level, Part 2 »

Meetup at Steve’s

Thanks to Steve Cairns for hosting the 3rd meetup for CGSG. We all had a great time.  I really enjoyed this meetup, as I finally got to touch and pull shots from the ultimate Expobar Brewtus II.  I used Vivace Dolce, roasted til verge of 2nd crack, rested for only a day.

Here’s a video of Kai Seng pulling a shot of Mexico Oaxaca from Sweet Maria’s. Steve has this neat sign that says “Espresso Open” on the wall overlooking his Brewtus.

[qt:/files/meetup_steve.mp4 176 160]

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This entry was posted on Sunday, May 6th, 2007 at 4:39 pm and is filed under Meetups. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

  • David

    whats with the nauseatingly slow and ineffective tamping technique. the grip is all wrong.

  • David

    shot should be pulled as soon as it locks in to the group….otherwise it will burn!

  • me

    We all have our very own customised way of dosing and tamping. I learned it from the veterans on coffeegeek and home barista, plus Steve showed me the way to hold the tamper. There is no one standard way to tamp and dose and distribute. The methods are just suited to the machines we are most accustomed to, which would be our home machines. And not everyone of us is lucky enough to have a spare Brewtus sitting around, so pardon us for the “incorrect” methods used.

    Steve, perhaps if we organise more meetups at your place, we might get to improve our tamping on the Brewtus.

  • kai seng

    Ahhh… my weird tamping technique.. for the record, i was the only one doing that grip, the rest of the group in the meet were using the traditional ones with great skill… :)
    At home, i use a naked portafilter with a wooden block that lets the portafilter to sit level. This frees the left hand to check the level of your tamp. Furthermore my overhand grip limits myself from tamping too hard.

    ermm… “shot should be pulled as soon as it locks in to the group”? With reference to HX, from the limited i know, the group head should be at the general shot temperature.
    What can burn the shot is the initial superheated water coming through the HX.
    These superheated water needs to be cleared in my HX, followed by a short wait for the HX to recover before pulling the shot.
    Alas my HX is not as temperature stable as a 2 to 3 group+big boiler

    Odd it may be, my ritual serves me well enough to get my great shot of coffee everyday. I think thats what counts.

  • at

    why isn’t the video working?