All of us at Slayer would like to congratulate Stephen Morrissey on being crowned the 2008 WBC Champion !!

I somehow pulled myself out of bed on two mornings to watch on line, and was amazed at the quality & creativity of the barista’s competing at this years WBC…I would have loved to have tasted a number of the espresso’s as they sounded amazing.

The final order:

#1 – Stephen Morrissey, Ireland

#2 – David Makin, Australia

#3 – Liesbeth Sleijster, The Netherlands

#4 – Daniel Remheden, Sweden

#5 – Michael Yung, Canada

#6 – Soren Stiller Markussen, Denmark

Thanks to everyone who dedicated so much time practicing for the regionals, nationals and especially the worlds. We salute everyone everyone who dedicates themselves to furthering the craft of coffee !

Cheers

I am posting one more item around our recent WBC-protocol temperature stability tests of the Slayer prototype espresso machine.  The graph above shows how the two different probe devices we used read and registered temperature and temperature change. The main difference between the Scace meter and the custom K probe device we put together in shop is response time.  I think we may have also gotten a small advantage in terms of precision with the K as well, but no one has really sorted through the data to determine this, yet. 

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Earlier this month, we switched on the third or fourth refinement (depends on your perspective) of our series of working prototypes.  This machine is meant to demonstrate a lot about how our final machine –  the Slayer — will work as an espresso brewing device when it becomes available to anyone who wants one later this year.  

Up to this point our machine platforms were meant to demonstrate particular concepts, like dry steam production, or shot quality .  .  . or whatever. With iteration number 4, we decided to run the WBC brew temperature stability test to see how the machine would fare if we ever take it there (or maybe when we take it there).  I have posted some of our results in the table below.

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Bottled Water redux

Last year I posted on this blog about bottled water.  You can read this by clicking here.  I described a particular phenomena that I find absolutely horrifying.  The so-called Great Pacific Ocean Garbage Patch.  The Patch is a huge mass of plastic crap that is circulating permanently in a natural current called the Pacific Gyre.  It is visible from space and twice the size of Texas, maybe larger.

The gyre captures garbage that finds its way to the ocean. Once in the gyre, garbage can remain “in circulation” for decades.  After awhile the sun breaks down some of this plastic and after many, many years these particles disappear from view.  However, additional garbage is introduced into this system at a higher rate than it disintegrates, so the situation is growing even worse with time.    

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