Friday, December 4, 2009

evaporative cooling the order of the day!

What can I say? I'm in aircon heaven! Actually to be technically correct its evaporative cooling heaven - which is very different from aircon. On Tuesday we had a new system installed which is basically a massive vented (brown, of course) box which goes on the roof, and four vents inserted in the ceiling - one for the barista, two for the chefs (one each!) and one for the customers!

Well... that's only partially true as you want to have your vents close together as this aids circulation, and having them near to the heat source means that they soak up the heat and expel it out the door!

I kid you not! Water is passed over some giant sponges in the box on the roof, then an industrial fan pushes that water cooled air through the building - the way to go is to have a door open at either end of our long space to create a current of air that runs through the building - which effectively gathers the heat generated from the oven, coffee machine, body heat etc, and rushes it out the door - this only work well in the Southern States if Australia - as we mostly have an intense dry heat - and is less effective in areas of high humidity

Even so on humid days we just cut the water to create a current of air which is way better than no circulation at all and heat building up

But the really good news is that its great for coffee as it produces a moisture rich environment which the beans love - they soak up the moisture in the air instead of drying out - and this is then captured in the cup as dark and rich (but hopefully not over extracted) flavours that retain more of the good oils from the bean!

It also means that we can run our shots for longer which leads to longer (say 20sec) pre-infusion before the shot runs, and 50sec to a minute extractions - without blonding or scolding the coffee - are not unusual

Its great for producing espresso and espresso based coffee!

And just as rewarding is the fact that its no longer 45C plus in the kitchen and behind the coffee machine on those sweltering Melbourne summer (and late spring - thank climate change for that one oh ye of little faith) days!


Cool climate conditions is cool staff and cool coffee - gotta be lovin that!


ACg

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