Lucky Clover

Well, I was halfway out the door on my way to Cafe Grumpy in Chelsea when I realized I hadn't yet blogged about my first experience there, and what a shame that would be!

This past Tuesday, a scant three days after returning from my coffee-free vacation, I popped in to the new Grumpy for a cup of Yirgacheffe before heading off to work myself. Nothing like stopping for coffee on the way to spending 7 hours making the stuff, am I right?

So I swung by and got to chat with the lovely M'lissa for a bit, and -- sorry everybody! -- ordered the last of the Yirg to be done up on that beautiful Clover machine.


(Sorry for being all up on you with my camera, M'lissa!)

It was actually the first time I'd gotten to see the Clover in action -- mostly because I had been too shy to cuddle up with it at the store's pre-opening events -- but I am 100% in love with the machine.

To simplify things, the machine brews coffee individually, maintaining a heat, pressure and water volume per cup (at the barista's discretion) inside a chamber, where the coffee is extracted using vaccuum press technology. It is essentially the marriage of espresso and french press techniques, brought together to make a perfectly pulled, grind-free cup of pure coffee essence and flavor.

The coffee is in contact with water for a controlled amount of time, and the grinds are both stirred by the barista (as seen in photo above), and left to swirl around in the water on their own.



After less than a minute of dwell time, the grinds are pulled out of the liquid, probably by the use of magic, or perhaps dozens of tiny elves.



What remains is a spent cake of grinds, which is shaved off of the machine using a kind of squeegee. Ready for the next one!

It's a beautiful thing!



Suffice it to say, I was thrilled and satisfied and caffeinated. The perfect cup!

Enough talking about it, I'm going to go get a piping hot Papa New Guinea!