Manual Espresso

This morning, I ordered a short latte from a local Uptown Espresso. I was shocked that after the barista took my order, she did everything by hand. I watched as she ground the beans, dosed them into the portafilter and tamped them down. She attached the portafilter to the machine and timed my shots by hand. And how was the coffee? It was delicious.

I really appreciate when things are done by hand. Almost every other coffee chain I know has fully automated machines. You push a button and the machine grinds the beans, doses and tamps the grounds in the same precise way each time, and pulls shots that come out more or less exactly the same each time. The automatic method is obviously popular for lots of reasons. It enables chains like Starbucks to achieve s sense of consistency across all their stores. Whether you're walking into a Starbucks on the upper east side of Manhattan or in downtown Seattle on Pike St., you know that the beverage you order will taste exactly like the ones you've had at other Starbucks establishments. It also renders a major factor of barista training unnecessary. Pulling good, consistent espresso shots is an art, and it's a lot easier to train new employees how to push a button than it is to teach them how to time shots. This also allows them to spend more of the employee training process on other things like customer service or individual recipes (i.e. how many pumps of what goes in this or that drink). It also enables them to service more customers with a smaller staff. I've read somewhere that a single Starbucks store can serve hundreds of customers in a single hour. That wouldn't be possible without automatic espresso machines.

But still there's something that really draws me to the manual approach. On most mornings I pull my own espresso shots. I prefer my own espresso to the ones I could get at my local Peet's or Tully's or Starbucks. Do manual shots always taste better than automatic ones? Not at all. There's plenty of things that can be done wrong. I'm always trying new kinds of beans too, which means I constantly need to adjust the fineness of the grind, the pressure I apply to the tamper, and the duration of the shot. Sometimes, when getting used to new beans, the result of all my hard work doesn't even taste like coffee. But when you get it right, it makes everything worth it.

Some enthusiasts claim that the best manual shots are consistently better than their automatic counterparts. I don't know if that's necessarily true. A lot of time is spent fine-tuning the automatic machines to produce the most consistently high-quality espresso possible. Of course, there's a little bit of a tradeoff between consistency and quality, but in general, they can make decently good coffee. But then again, it's not necessarily the quality of the brew that draws me to the manual process. Like all manual processes, it's the personal aspect it introduces. You can curtail your espresso to be exactly the way you want it? Do you want a lighter brew or a heavier brew? Do you prefer it to have a hint of bitterness or would you rather shoot to extract all the aromatic flavors of the beans without the bitterness that comes toward the end of the extraction? You won't find any buttons on an automatic machine that'll let you make any of those choices. If you don't want to make those choices, it's fine. You can keep your Starbucks. But there's something about my coffee every morning that says it was made specially for me, just the way I like it. That's why manual espresso will never go out of style. Not because it's better than the automatic kind, but because it's more personal.