The New York Times used words like “cult object,” “majestic,” and “titillating”; the Economist called it “ingenious” and “sleek.”
The subject of these encomiums is, incongruously, a commercial coffee machine—the Clover 1s, an $11,000 device that brews regular coffee (not espresso) one cup at a time.
The Clover’s real benefit to coffee-drinkers is the way it combines French press and vacuum methods to produce one of the best cups of coffee.
The Clover’s “VacuumPress” method, however, creates a vacuum to draw the water down through the grounds, extracting flavor and yet leaving them behind.
It precisely makes one cup of coffee at a time, letting you select brewing time and temperature to coax the best flavor out of the particular bean you’re using.
The barista pours ground coffee onto an extremely fine filter atop a piston that descends into the machine. After the coffee steeps, the piston rises, creating a vacuum that pulls water through the grounds. The finished coffee flows through a spout into a waiting cup.
This machine is not for mass production but only made on order…each device is built to order by a small Seattle company. It brews coffee like a French press, but it’s more dramatic to watch and much more precise.
It is equipped with a “PID algorithm” for regulating temperature and “programmable workflow modes” to help micromanage the brewing process. Via : slate / luxurylaunches
I am trying to compile a comprehensive list of locations that have Clover machine in place and collect as many recipes as possible. All the data is for public use, just to keep the Clover community going. I started with locations and have quite a few now. Would be great if someone could share recipes as well at http://www.beclover.com
Starbucks bought them out. They apparently have a few locations with the machines already.
forgot to link. . .
http://www.starbucks.com/aboutus/pressdesc.asp?id=848
The Clover is pretty much over-priced, over-engineered vac pot coffee that has been available since the 1830s. The quality is no better than what you can get from a $200 vac pot using that 1830s technology, IMO. (And while they like to boast about the $11k figure to get people’s attention, I know of not one café that has forked over more than half that for one to get the “promotional discount”.)
Furthermore, for Clovers as well as vac pots, the brewing investments are pointless unless the coffee itself is fresh enough and has the right roasting and flavor profile to shine under the brewing process.
Which means for the coffee that Starbucks uses, which targets a wholly different roasting style and often has about two weeks of oxidation on their coffee since roasting, using a Clover makes about as much sense as buying a $30,000 home stereo system to listen to AM talk radio.