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The ten minute challenge is where I try to make as many of a single type of drink, with varied espresso setups, in ten minutes.
This is the first one we've made, where I use two DE1XL and a Niche grinder, to make just espressos.
I've intentionally made this not into a competition sport:
I haven't prepped anything, nor practiced this setup, when I first do it, so you can see what a real-world experience of this is like
I'm doing a lot of fussy "specialty coffee" things that slow me down. Why? Because my goal is not "to make the fastest coffee" at a cost to the drink quality. I want to "to make good coffee, fast". Good coffee is the goal.
I have someone chattering at me the whole time, engaging me in conversation. This constantly breaks my concentration. This is meant to be like a real cafe or a real home, where customers or children would be distracting you. Making good coffee, fast shouldn't be antisocial, and should be able to survive constant distraction.
LESSONS LEARNED
After filming and watching this video, I learned a whole lotta things:
I do not have a consistent workflow at all. Often, I could be running the grinder, but I forgot. Or, I could have weighed the next bean dose, but I didn't.
I make a lot of mistakes, especially with getting a cup under the portafilter after hitting start. My cups are not at hand, and where I put my drinks when they're done, is not close either. This makes them not part of my workflow.
I have done this a few times before, on my own (to make espressos for the weekend away from work). Without distraction I was much faster (45 seconds per espresso, vs 60 seconds).
I never managed to get both espresso machines going at the same time. This is largely because I had no workflow planned and didn't get my portafilters prepped in time.
At one point in the video, I prepare a puck, lock it in the machine, and then forget to his start. Whoops. A minute later, I look at the idle machine, take the portafilter out and knock the puck out.
The slower Londonium espresso profile was not an obstacle here. The problem was me.
Coming soon (already filmed):
1. I make 10 minutes of lattes with this setup
2. and I move to another setup with just 1 DE1XL and a Niche, to make espressos
Spoiler alert:
In the next video, you'll see that I'm able to make the same number of drinks with one DE1XL as with two DE1XL. Most of the mistakes I do in today's video don't occur with one machine. Probably because one DE1XL/Niche has been my home setup for a few years. I'm comfortable with it and have a smooth workflow.
Still to film:
lattes with 1 DE1XL and a Niche
In this video, I managed 10 espressos.
One more espresso was almost finished at 10:00
And another espresso should have been there, but was distracted, forgot to hit START and threw away the puck after a confused minute.
So.... 12 espressos in ten minutes should be easily doable, which is an espresso every 50 seconds. But I think I could do a lot better, too. As I speed up my workflow, we're going to find new things that are the bottlenecks. I might need another Niche grinder, for instance.
Thanks for watching!
-john
#10minchallenge #videos
