New Coffee & Espresso Gear | SCAA Event Portland 2012 | Crossland Pourover

CROSSLAND AUTOMATED POUR-OVER BREWER  |  FIRST LOOK

Last year at SCAA Houston, I had the opportunity to see an early version of the Crossland Pourover Brewer (I actually don't know the name, or even if it yet has a name...).  The designer and engineer of this the device is none other than Bill Crossland, the Seattle based coffee visionary who played a major role in designing the ESI / La Marzocco GS/3, and now the Crossland CC1 Espresso Machine.  He brought a couple examples of the next iteration his automated pourover brewer to this year's SCAA show in Portland.

Manual pourover brewing is more and more becoming the preferred method of brewing single origin coffees in quality focused specialty coffee bars around the world, and for good reason; the individual attention given to each coffee can  bring focus to an artfully roasted bean and transform it into a surreal sensory experience.  Some of the most memorable cups of coffee I have had the joy of drinking were done using a pourover technique and a Chemex brewer.

Some major problems with this approach are the cost of the labor involved to brew a few cups at a time, and the tired barista who looses focus at the end of a long busy day at the bar.  Enter Bill Crossland's vision for an automated pour-over device.

The Crossland Automated Pourover features, most visibly, an articulating arm that can mimic some of the most popular patterns a well trained barista utilizes, such as a swirl or back and fourth pattern.  Temperature is controlled by a PID-like algorithm in two water boilers to increase the heating element surface area to water volume ratio for fast recovery.  Ambient heat from the boilers keep the carafe warm during brewing.

As always, I am impressed with the visionary genius that is in Crossland's creations.  For those of us who appreciate the floral subtleties of a Panama Geisha, or fruity complexities of a washed Kenyan, we are easily excited about innovations such as these.  It is doubtful that they will be a fixture in every generic coffee chain with green aprons any time soon, but time will tell if and when they end up in your favorite cafe.