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comment by cgod
cgod  ·  2950 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: Grappling with hipster-hate

So this thing is supposed to be a pourover machine. To make a good snobby pourover you are supposed to prewet the grounds for about 30 seconds and let them gass out. I'm guessing this doesn't do that because they didn't show it. After prewet you are supposed to pour a thin stream of water as continuously as possible for two and one half minutes. Constant stream of water is supposed to maintain the correct temperature over the duration of the pour and keep all the grounds submerged for the duration of the extraction. This contraption only has one spout for five cups. Looks like it just pisses water in a hefty stream and moves on to the next cup, no constant temp varying water quantity.

Might not matter all that much that it doesn't use good form. I don't think a pourover suffers all that much from being made with bad form. It does seem like you could put 5 nozzles on the thing, a thinner stream of water and make it pour according to the prevailing dogma at it's price point.

A modern high tech extractor for air pots pours the water over the grounds with a prewet. It doesn't use a single thin stream, instead it has a kinda shower head pour out. I think the only reason for a thin stream is that it mimics a person holding a tea pot and that shower head might be just as good a model for a pourover machine. I wonder if you shrunk a Fetco down to a single cup extractor what the resulting coffee would be like. I'm guessing it would be a hell of a lot like a decent pourover, if you fiddled around with the brew basket and pour speed. A modern Fetco extractor runs about $1400-1800 I'm sure they could get a single cup 5 barrel out for $3k and it's temperature, speed of water flow, and duration of the flow are all programmable.

I'm sure that this device is going to do well and that competitors to it will emerge with a much better product. I don't think such a device should cost more than 5k and it should work better than this thing appears to.

A really nice espresso machine costs about 10k, just as a reference point.





kleinbl00  ·  2950 days ago  ·  link  ·  

It won't work without an Ecosmart PB10. No temp control at all - it takes the water at whatever temp you get it and sprays it around.

cgod  ·  2950 days ago  ·  link  ·  

It could, brewers do it, espresso machines do it, these guys only know how to spray water in circles. Those on demand home water heaters do it.

kleinbl00  ·  2949 days ago  ·  link  ·  

I'm aware of that - to clarify, anything and everything to do with temperature has been offloaded.