Coffee Smarter: Alvin Kim, Baratza & Breville Group

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Guest: Alvin Kim
Role: Marketing Manager at Baratza, part of the Breville Group.
Online: www.baratza.com • @Baratza on Instagram
What they order: A drip unless there is no one behind him, then a pourover.

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SOME VALUABLE LINKS

Baratza’s YouTube Channel is filled with helpful content, including maintenance techniques. This video shows the internal components we were discussing during this podcast.
Order Baratza replacement parts: https://www.baratza.com/en-us/landing/product/parts
The Baratza Troubleshooting Hub…it’s a long link. The button goes there!
Baratza Troubleshooting

KEY TAKEAWAYS FROM THE POD

The inside of a coffee grinder looks cool. I don’t really understand how it all works, but it definitely looks cool. I saw the Baratza grinders fully disassembled at the Specialty Coffee Expo. I did a cartoon-esque U-turn in a sea of coffee people in an effort to get a closer look.
Inside the grinder house, you’ll find the transmission, which makes the bottom of the burr rotate, not unlike how a car engine makes a wheel turn, albeit without the gasoline.
Different grinders will have different systems of a drive crank or belt that cause the rotation. For this show, we focused mostly on the Baratza Encore because it, along with its upgraded sibling, the Virtuoso, is the most accessible of the grinders to the public.
An Encore sits on my coffee cart in the kitchen. I realized that "coffee-cart" sounds cooler than it is. To clarify, I have a coffee cart because space is always at a premium in southern California, and in my apartment, they sacrificed kitchen countertops.
The most important mechanism inside is the one that allows for precise and consistent adjustments for moving the burr, ensuring evenly ground coffee at various levels of coarseness.
Alvin noted that every year there is a new way to come at coffee, and at Baratza, they’ve got a grinder for that!
One of the things I most appreciate about the Baratza grinders is that they are designed to be repairable. My last grinder stopped working after a few years, and it essentially became a very awkwardly sized paperweight.
With the Encore and other various models, the parts most likely to break first, if they break, are designed to be so because they are more affordable for the consumer to replace. You can acquire replacement parts directly from Baratza or a Baratza retailer.
The more expensive parts inside the grinder are of higher quality to prevent the potential need for repair.
Finally, what makes the company Baratza special to Alvin, is that the business isn’t just about the quality of the grind, it is about the people on the other side. It’s also about the quality grind, of course, but not only that. The humans matter.

ROAST! INDUSTRY PARTNERS

A huge, on-going thank you to all of this show’s industry partners.

Big news from Hacea Coffee Source all-around!

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