I have been tinkerin’ with brewing systems.
…I’m looking for quality,
…something that brews cup to cup,
…but is easy enough for an average counterperson type employee to handle.
I have a Clover, and I have an Avalon. The Clover is too complex and has too many steps for my business concept (high volume). The Avalon seems do-able. What are my alternatives?
What do you guys do to serve fast and simple quality cup of brew?

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Which Avalon are you using ?
Is it the Hands on Coffee ?
What cup sizes are you doing ?
Cheers, Greg
Which Avalon are you using ?
Is it the Hands on Coffee ?
A: Yes.
What cup sizes are you doing ?
A: 12oz, 16oz & 20oz ... which is a problem because it was designed for 8 & 12 only ( I'm tweaking it)
"The Quality Cup" sounds like a neat cafe name or a barista competition name.
I've been considering the same dilemna...I did see a coffee bar in Portland that did all their brewed coffee in French presses during the busy times - they brewed 64 ozs at a time, and moved to a thermal pot. Its not quit as good as a single serve, but gets you the quantity to get through the peak traffic periods a little easier, and still provide a quality brew. They you can go back to the single brew off peak. I was thinking of doing that for my house everyday brew, then keeping the single cup Melitta style for the single origins or "special" stuff...thoughts?
The pour through methods are good, but involve grinding and portioning of the coffee. I am looking to automate this. When preparing 100 cups an hour, and trying to offer 3 to 4 origins, how do we contain waste? What I am looking for is machinery or technology that baristas/owners have seen.
Who out there has used the Avalon "Hands on Coffee". How do they feel about the technology? What does the Clover offer that a self contained grind-and-brew unit cannot?
Seems to me your walking a fine line, between serving high quality coffee brewed to perfection and volume. In my opinion it cannot be done. Your going to have to either sacrifice speed for quality or the other way around. However I think the quickest best way to prepare a quality coffee is a mellita. You could stream line the preparation method to shorten the preparation time like have your coffee premeasured, have a designated grinder, and a convienatly located water tower. But all this doesn't speed the actual process it takes for the coffee to brew. Best of luck, Cheers.
Why not use a pour over and preportion your throws earlier in the day? There are plenty of machines that can dispense a set portion of water, and grinding ain't hard..
I like Kyles pour over idea and have wondered prior why this would not be a suitable solution for both speed and cup by cup quality.
It would seem that the only thing required to make this work would be a brew basket insert that would allow for a smaller protion of ground coffee ie. a cup basket vs a pot basket.
One could then dose a cups worth of grounds into the insert and pour into the pour over the quantity of water they need as per the cup size, 8,12,16, 20 oz > would somewhat automate the process while still allowing for hands on with the grind and water quantity.
Does your brew-system need to be something with lots of marketable tech appeal, or are you really just looking for a good cup? Seriously. This is not a judgment, just trying to figure out exactly what you are going for here. The fact that so many have mentioned pourovers tells me something...

The aforementioned pourover system could be made to work, if that is not too low-tech for you. Maybe treat it like an espresso bar? For high-volume you could set up a row of 3-4 dedicated grinders - either the doserless timed or just run with a doser, and either grind or dose on demand into your pourover unit. Don't want to make your customer wait for 3 minutes? Why not move the order point up the line a bit (like they did at our busy neighborhood Chick-fil-a drive through..)

If you are really worried about process time in your key rush times, why not do small-batch pourover brews into carafes for the popular brews only at those times? This would give you great quality with no wait and very little waste. Once you were through the rush, you could switch back to single-pourover to-order. Just like Shari mentioned about the batched french press, only your cup is more consistent from rush to non-rush.

Sorry that I'm no help here with the tech-ier options. Good luck.
Actually Brady, you've really struck on something, ...a grind-on-demand doser grinder, and programming the hotwater spout on an espresso machine for 12, 16, 20oz @ the right temp... it's alot cheaper than the $9K Avalon machine....
I try :)

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