Clover Demonstrationby Jamin Haddox (the ham in the last picture)
This past weekend, Emily and I headed over to Kopplin’s Coffee in the Highland Park neighborhood of St. Paul to taste coffee brewed with the Clover 1s brewing system. The Clover has been a hot topic in the Specialty Coffee Industry since the first prototype a couple of years ago. Now, the first production units are hitting the market and changing how roasters and retailers are thinking about prepared coffee.

Kopplin’s Coffee is the first coffee shop in Minnesota to feature coffee brewed with the Clover machine. The Clover 1s employs both vacuum and press pot technology, creating an extremely flavorful and well-extracted cup of coffee in under a minute with no waste.

Miguel Meza from Paradise Roasters provided some great coffees to sample, including some of the prized Hacienda La Esmerelda Geisha from Panama, a Lake Tawar Sumatra, and some Ethiopian Yergacheffes. Emily and I were both impressed with the clarity of flavor produced with the Clover. The coffee reminded us a lot of how coffee tastes on our cupping table: All of the subtle and delicate flavors and aromas of the coffee were available, but balanced by the caramelly roasty-ness of a drinking roast. The coffee consistency produced in the clover is substantially different than traditional drip brew, likening more to what’s produced in a vac pot. The coffee has smooth mouthfeel and is and opaque, not a clarified beverage like you get from a drip brewer. I thought that the Clover did an exceptional job bringing out the subtleness of flavor in the Sumatra while preserving the body and heft that make Sumatrans so delightful. Special thanks to Miguel and Andrew Kopplin for their hospitality and for providing the opportunity to experience this revolutionary new brewing system.

If in the area, experience it for yourself, at http://www.kopplinscoffee.com

For more information about the Clover 1s, visit http://www.cloverequipment.com

How it works: First, freshly ground coffee is loaded into the top of the machine as the 70 micron screen piston lowers. The barista can designate cup size, contact time, etc. The machine is turned on, and the ground coffee is showered with water and agitated by the barista. The screen piston raises and lowers, pulling the brew through the grounds and dispensing it into the cup--all in under a minute. There are no paper filters to trap lipids and flavor compounds, no lingering flavors, and no varying temperatures (this machine uses PID controls to monitor brew temperature) to ruin extraction, only pure coffee flavor made fresh to order.