Latest / Coffee People Podcast / Phil McKnight, President of Global Specialty Coffee at Breville shows us the new Baratza Encore Pro.

Transcript

Phil McKnight, President of Global Specialty Coffee at Breville shows us the new Baratza Encore Pro. · Coffee People Podcast

• 0:23
  It's more fun that way. Yeah, Yeah, of course.
• 0:26
  Would you mind telling the audience what your name is and
• 0:29
  and what it is that you do for your living?
• 0:31
  Yeah. Right, so I'm doing the best job
• 0:33
  in the world. I work for Breville, I live in
• 0:37
  the US now, I'm an Australian and I'm running Breville's
• 0:40
  global specialty coffee business unit.
• 0:42
  So that's the business unit that has the overarching umbrella of
• 0:47
  looking after the brands. Barazza, who is born and bred in
• 0:52
  the US, and Lalit, the Italian espresso machine company that
• 0:57
  will be celebrating its 40th year next year.
• 1:02
  So very privileged to caretake those two brands.
• 1:05
  I should tell you that I'm a bit of a Homer for Burrata.
• 1:10
  Alvin Kim was someone I interviewed last year.
• 1:12
  We talked through all the different grinders and I have
• 1:14
  one at home that I use. I'm not sponsored by Burrata.
• 1:19
  You guys have a new product launch.
• 1:20
  Can you tell us a little bit of about that and why?
• 1:23
  Why launch it here at SCA? Yeah.
• 1:25
  So we're super excited to be launching the Encore ESP Pro,
• 1:31
  which is it's, it's an evolution, but also a step
• 1:36
  change in what we've done previously with all of our
• 1:40
  grinder platforms, particularly our conical grinder platforms.
• 1:43
  It's the first stepless adjustment grind mechanism that
• 1:48
  perhaps has ever introduced. So it's.
• 1:51
  It combines that stepless adjustment mechanism which has a
• 1:56
  very high resolution grind adjustment in the espresso range
• 2:01
  that moves 2.2 microns per degree of adjustment mechanism
• 2:07
  rotation. So it gives you the opportunity
• 2:10
  to dial in with high precision any coffee recipe in the
• 2:14
  espresso range without compromising the other blue
• 2:17
  methods. So you can grind, grind
• 2:19
  everything from espresso right through to French press and cold
• 2:23
  brew. But there's a very high focus on
• 2:26
  the espresso range of the products.
• 2:28
  So that coupled together with a whole bunch of other like really
• 2:33
  I think cool consumer features ion generator for reducing
• 2:38
  static and retention. We have two grind modes where
• 2:43
  you're able to dose in single dose mode where you can freeway
• 2:46
  your coffee, dose it in through the single hopper that we
• 2:50
  provide with the product and then it auto shuts off when the
• 2:53
  last beam has been ground. Or you can switch over to hopper
• 2:56
  mode, which allows you to use a digital timer that that has a
• 3:00
  precision of .1 of the second resolution.
• 3:04
  And so you can you can use that workflow if you want timer or
• 3:09
  single dose. I can tell you have like this,
• 3:12
  you know, all this stuff and I'm like listening to it going.
• 3:15
  I'm gonna like have to get my hands on it to like figure it
• 3:17
  all out. But that's it.
• 3:19
  Sounds impressive. It's very intuitive to use, I
• 3:21
  must say, like we did a lot of work on on the UI and the UX of
• 3:26
  the product. So it's it's pretty intuitive
• 3:29
  and it's the workflow is pretty seamless whether you choose
• 3:32
  single dose or whether you choose hopper and the timer.
• 3:36
  Very cool. I know, coming from Australia.
• 3:38
  Strong coffee culture. You're now here, Seattle, strong
• 3:41
  coffee culture. You find yourself out and about
• 3:44
  in one of those great Seattle neighborhoods.
• 3:47
  You're going to stop and order a coffee.
• 3:49
  What are you going to order? My go to is always just a single
• 3:52
  espresso. That's generally what I start
• 3:55
  with and then and then I'll I'll move on to something generally
• 3:59
  mill face. So it'll be some sort of double
• 4:02
  shot flat wide or or something similar what we might go to.
• 4:06
  Well, Phil, I really appreciate your time.
• 4:08
  Thank you for joining, Coffee People.
• 4:10
  Yeah, and Congrats on the new product.
• 4:11
  Yeah, great. Thanks so much.
• 4:13
  You're welcome. Pleasure if we do, if we just
• 4:20
  touch it or light up with this world what we're.
• 4:23
  Using for sweet. So you can see that right now
• 4:27
  we're, we're in the, we're in the espresso range.
• 4:31
  That's what the ESP is about. Now there's we say there's,
• 4:36
  there's 40 steps, but they're not really steps.
• 4:39
  They're actually 40 positions with the positions.
• 4:44
  So you can see as we're as we're turning it, it's it's going up
• 4:50
  to 40. And then once we get over 40,
• 4:52
  then it goes into the brood coffee worms.
• 4:55
  So this is when it's you get into the granularity for, for
• 5:03
  the drip filter for press and for and for for cold brew.
• 5:09
  So this is even though it's got these indications, you can feel
• 5:12
  when you use the mechanism, the mechanism is actually stepless.
• 5:18
  Oh yeah, can I put some coffee in there and grab it or is it
• 5:22
  not? Oh wow.
• 5:26
  Let's just grab you some coffee. We'll just dump some of this in
• 5:29
  here in any of the grind range because it was quite linear.
• 5:33
  So what we did was we wanted to fix that.
• 5:35
  So we have a mechanism that's sort of like it's got 2 slopes
• 5:39
  in its adjustment. So we've also got a flow control
• 5:44
  disk. So we stopped popcorn in.
• 5:47
  Yeah, it's also got the knob on top of the the Burr.
• 5:50
  So you it's a quick release knob.
• 5:52
  You just spin it around and then you can pull the Burr out
• 5:55
  together with the paddle and clean the grinder out.
• 5:58
  And then if we want to grind some coffee, this is single dose
• 6:01
  hopper. A lot of the tactile sounded
• 6:24
  feel of the Brazos. Exactly.
• 6:26
  So there we have in single dose mode, so it automatically shut
• 6:30
  off when the last beam was ground.
• 6:32
  Yeah. If you press and hold the button
• 6:35
  then it will switch into timer mode.
• 6:39
  So this is where we now we're in.
• 6:41
  We're in timer mode and we can adjust the amount of time the
• 6:45
  grind is going to run for as opposed to using single dose
• 6:50
  where it'll shut off after the last beam is ground.
• 6:52
  So you can install the hopper. And this, this is what I like
• 6:56
  about this, about this, which is an extension over the, the
• 7:00
  encore on the, and the Encore ESP is, is we've got a bean shut
• 7:05
  off really convenient when you're switching out the coffees
• 7:08
  that you're enjoying. If you've got the, if you've got
• 7:12
  the hopper in and then you can fill it up.
• 7:16
  And then you can and then you can just use and then you can
• 7:18
  just use the the timer to to deliver the the dose you want
• 7:23
  using basically time as a proxy. For dose yeah no, I like it a
• 7:27
  lot smart it's one of those things where it's like hey these
• 7:31
  seem practical and logical but if they don't exist the.
• 7:35
  Other thing that we've done with with this product is there's a
• 7:38
  lot, there's a lot. So all of all of the front, all
• 7:42
  of the front fascia here is is all using diecast and anodized
• 7:47
  zinc. So it's like if you pick the
• 7:50
  product up, like the product's pretty, pretty weighty.
• 7:56
  Oh yeah, wow, really sorry compared to the others.
• 7:59
  You know, we've got a lot of criticism for the encore and the
• 8:02
  encore, ESP. And even a little bit about the
• 8:05
  Virtuoso plus a lot of plastic this is we replaced a lot of the
• 8:09
  plastic with with die cast and Anazi zinc, especially in the
• 8:13
  front with like high, high use areas and and continual touch
• 8:18
  points where it's needed. So.
• 8:21
  Oh, very cool. Thank you for the time.
• 8:23
  I really appreciate it. Yeah, no problem.
• 8:25
  And I'm excited to learn more about it as I go.
• 8:49
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