Pour-Over at Peak: Sheffield Baristas on the xBloom Studio

When there’s a queue out the door, pour-over is usually the first thing to go. Nobody likes telling a regular they can’t have the guest coffee as a hand brew, but nobody can spare a barista for ten minutes either.

The xBloom Studio grinds, weighs and pours a filter coffee by itself, following a recipe you set once. We wanted to know if that actually helps on a busy bar, so we asked the people using it: Carlos at Caravan Coffee Roasters, Sam at South Street Kitchen, Isaac at Cloud Coffee and the team at Mow’s.

Pour-over when it’s busy

Sam at South Street Kitchen, a café and kitchen in Sheffield’s Park Hill, didn’t need long to answer.

“On a busy day like today, I would always dread if someone orders a V60, because that’s going to take ten minutes of my time while I was trying to run the whole show. But with that you just set it going.”

Sam, South Street Kitchen

Isaac at Cloud Coffee in Crookes had been using a Studio for a few days when we spoke. Cloud gets a lot of keen home brewers through the door, so turning down a hand brew stings more than it might elsewhere.

“Typically when we’re busy, busy, busy, we won’t even offer a hand brew. And I think if we had one of these in the shop, we’d obviously be able to, because it’s a case of weighing your beans, you stick it in, I’ve got my phone basically up and ready, I just need to connect to it and press go.”

Isaac, Cloud Coffee

Would it mean they could offer pour-over at peak? “100%,” he said. “Which is probably the most attractive part about it for us.”

“When we’ve got a guest espresso and they want to try a hand brew and it’s, I’ve got a queue out the door mate, really sorry, I can’t help you. It would really help with that.”

Isaac, Cloud Coffee

He reckoned it sped up service generally, too. That day he hadn’t made a single hand brew, because customers wanted to watch the machine do it.

Does it taste as good as a hand brew?

Isaac didn’t reinvent anything. He took Cloud’s usual hand-brew recipe, a bloom and three pours, and set it up in the xBloom app on his phone.

“I’ve basically used the recipe that we use by hand, and just programmed that.”

Isaac, Cloud Coffee

On the first day they brewed the same coffee both ways. Even with the funkiest co-ferments they had on, he said, “there wasn’t a huge difference, really.” For a café, that’s the whole point. The cup tastes like your pour-over, and nobody has to stand over it.

One recipe, lots of baristas

Caravan Coffee Roasters put their first Studio in about a year ago, and Carlos from the roastery was frank about why. Finding and training staff is hard, and a good hand brew takes training.

“What we’ve seen in the industry is that hiring labour is very difficult… when you want to do hand pour-overs, it’s probably the first thing that goes out of the menu.”

Carlos, Caravan Coffee Roasters

“xBloom allow us to keep consistency, share recipes with accounts, get input from them. We’re learning a lot from them. They’re also coming up with amazing recipes.”

Carlos, Caravan Coffee Roasters

His system is simple. He writes a three-pour recipe as the house standard, and each site duplicates it and adjusts it for whatever coffee they’re serving. In Sheffield you’ll find the Studio at Steam Yard on Division Street and at its sister shop, Corner Store on Sharrow Vale Road, which pours Caravan coffee.

Sam at South Street Kitchen made the same point from the other side of the counter: if you’re not sure where to start, ask your roaster whether they have an xBloom recipe they can share.

The app goes much further if you want it to. Carlos has recipes running to five and seven pours, and you can change the water temperature between them. Isaac had been looking at what other people were doing.

“I was looking at other people’s recipes, which is a really cool feature on the app, and seeing people with eight, nine different pours. I think I’ve kept mine simpler.”

Isaac, Cloud Coffee

For most cafés, three or four pours is plenty.

Customers stop and watch

At Sip Fest, Sheffield’s coffee festival, Caravan had the Studio brewing one of their best coffees. Nobody had to watch a kettle, so the team could spend their time talking to people about the coffee, which is what a good tasting flight does too.

“xBloom… allows you to input a recipe, modify the smaller details to get the best out of that coffee, and really focus on the conversations.”

Carlos, Caravan Coffee Roasters

Sam has turned it into a bit of a routine.

“I tell them, do you want… my little robot friend who will make for you? They’re quite excited, they’ll watch it, watch it spin and everything.”

Sam, South Street Kitchen

“We get a lot of homebrewers in, and they’ve all been very interested in seeing it, how it operates.”

Isaac, Cloud Coffee

Worth remembering if you sell kit. The customers leaning over the counter to watch it pour are the ones who’ll ask where they can get one.

Not only filter coffee

Carlos has one at home too, and he uses it for more than pour-over. He grinds small espresso doses on it because he trusts the grinder, and uses the hot water spout and the tea brewer a lot.

“The grind settings are always perfect. So when I have a small dose, I’d rather put it on the xBloom because I know it’s going to be perfect.”

Carlos, Caravan Coffee Roasters

“It’s a fantastic 360 machine. It can cater to commercial environments, domestic environments, a lot of the range in between.”

Carlos, Caravan Coffee Roasters

South Street Kitchen keep two recipes on theirs. One is for customers. The other, in Sam’s words, is “just as big as possible for the chefs”.

First impressions

The team at Mow’s Coffee on Arundel Street had never used one before. Their verdict, with two words taken out:

“I love it. It’s so sick. I’ve never used one before… Makes my life so much easier.”

Mow’s Coffee

Isaac’s was more measured. “We’ve not had any issues with it at all,” he said. “It’s definitely something I think we would like to use in the shop.”

The specs

Setting one up on your bar

1. Start with the recipe you already hand-brew. Isaac did, and it held up.
2. Run it from the tank while you try it out. For everyday service, plumb it in. A pressurised supply needs xBloom’s inline pressure regulator.
3. Use filtered water. Scale damage isn’t covered by the warranty.
4. Save one recipe for each coffee on your filter menu, named after the coffee, so whoever is on shift picks the right one.
5. Keep a box of papers next to it. It uses one 155 mm paper per brew.

What to order

The xBloom Studio in Midnight Black is in stock now. Add a box of xBloom paper filters, which is the bit you’ll reorder. A spare Omni Dripper 2 and a second magnetic dosing cup mean you can weigh the next order while one is brewing. For tea, there’s the xBloom Tea Brewer. Everything else is in the xBloom range.

Where to find them

Thanks to Carlos, Sam, Isaac and the Mow’s team for talking to us. If you’d like to try a Studio on your own bar, have a word with your account manager. New to Brewed By Hand? Open a trade account.