The Curtis Hot Water System was no different. The feature I refer to in this case is the Aeration System. Every 30 minutes the Curtis will pump air into the tank to re-invigorate the tank of water. The problem with heated water sitting in a tank is it loses oxygen, therefore losing a lot of the taste and end up going 'stale'. By introducing air into the water it keeps the water invigorated and fresh. The user can also manually aerate by pushing the Aerate button.
Other cool features are Digital Display of Boiler Temperature, Digital Display of Water Tap Exit Temperature, easy to adjust Digital Display and nice slow flow tap to control flow and dose.
As you can see in the above picture, and as usual, we wern't happy with just leaving the thing alone. We could make it better!! So ive added a stainless steel box to reduce the drop of the water to the vessel. Ive also added Water Scales. These scales measure volume of liquids. The benefit of this is if you know your serving size, eg 350ml, you accurately dispense 350ml into your pouring vessel. Genius! Not us, the scales!So lets recap, we have accurate, controllable, displayed temperature. We have an aeration system to make sure the water stays fresh. We have scales to control the amount of dispensed water. We have 22L of water capacity, we have a 23amp engine which keeps the water at a very stable temperature. This sounds great!
Testing..
I wanted to see firstly how hot the water was at the bottom of my Hario Buono Kettle. I Used a Fluke with the supplied probe.For me a good brewing temperature is around 88-93c. So I set the boiler temperature to 94c.
The result was a steady 90.5c, i put 3 litres through and it never varied more than 0.3c. My next question was how long does it hold above 88c for? It took 3 seconds to walk from the Curtis to my Hario Pourover Station and start pouring. But ideally you want to have completed pouring just before 2 minutes, this includes the pre-pour bloom, then to be all done at around 2:30.
At a minute it was reading 89.4c,
At 2 minutes it was 88.4c. Not forgetting these temperatures are at the bottom of the Buono. I fed the probe through the spout and was just poking out the bottom, it wasn't touching the base though. If you wanted a higher brewing temperature then just nudge up the Curtis Boiler Temperature.Next was to test the water exit temperature from the tap.
You can see the probe (very poor photography, as usual) just below the exit. The Boiler Temp was set at 95c, its showed a tap water temperature of 94c and the Fluke showed a temperature of 93.5c. The Curtis only shows temperature in whole numbers, so it could be rounding up, but either way pretty accurate.But for me the aim of the exercise was to see if we could provide a water delivery system that met our high expectations and was affordable. I think we've achieved both goals.
With the introduction of our Brew Stations, Hario V60 Coffee Drippers we are finding more cafes are offering pour over coffee as an alternative to espresso. its relatively cheap to set up, easy to put away and a great way to introduce customers to different types of coffee. Its a very interactive experience.
All the equipment is available to see/use/abuse in our showroom. Just make an appointment and come down.
