When was the last time you Instagrammed a batch brewer? Oftentimes tucked away in a corner or resigned to the back counter, batch brewers are just a fact of life in cafe design. The brewers are needed but theyโre not always that exciting to look at.
The basic concept of pouring hot water over coffee grounds is at the core of every batch brew makerโso how much more can you do with the equipment?
Apparently, you can do a lot more. According to the founders of Oakland-based Voga Coffee, manufacturer of the Ground Control Cyclops, batch brewers are due for an innovation shakeup starting from the ground up. CEO and co-founder Eli Salomon noticed a market opening six years ago. Brewers were unattractive, produced mediocre cups of coffee, and didnโt allow for much customization. Instead of iterating from what was already on the market, Voga decided to change up the brewing process entirely.
โWe have the only brewer in existence that can fundamentally manipulate the flavor profiles of a coffee and get you different types of equally and balanced structured flavors,โ says Salomon.
To perfect this machine, Salomon enlisted the help of co-founders CTO and chemist Dr. Josh Avins and Chief Coffee Officer and licensed Q-grader Jason Sarley. Since winning Best New Product (Commercial Equipment) at the 2018 SCA Expo and receiving coverage, Voga has placed over 50 machines in seven countries.
The Cyclops isnโt all about looks, though the vacuum chamber with its swirling coffee is mesmerizing to watch. To succeed in the equipment market nowadays, you need more than a pretty exterior. You need engineering, support, and perhaps most importantly, a good, distinctive product.
The brewer’s first extraction brings out brightness and sweetness, the second brings out character, and the third time extracts body and bitterness. If youโve ever broken down an espresso shot before, the concept might sound familiar. But thereโs a twist. This brewer produces a layered product: fresh water is added for every cycle, vacuumed up, and dispensed into the carafe on top of any previous cycleโs layers.
The final cup is unusually clean because the water never gets to the point in the extraction curve where undesirable flavors are pulled out of the coffee. โWhen we add fresh water, itโs completely unsaturated water,โ says Salomon. โSo what that does from a chemistry perspective is it resets the extraction curves back to the very beginning.โ
While the Cyclops allows you to program one to six cycles, Salomon says two to three cycles is more typical, producing an overall brew time of five to eight minutes. This all sounds complicated, but the brewer was built with simplicity in mind. The Cyclops comes with five pre-set recipes with options to add your own. Oftentimes, the profile adjustments needed are only a few seconds per cycle. With a modular sub-assembly design, Salomon boasts that โanything can be removed and replaced within an hour.โ And if youโre unconvinced, the Cyclops is in several tech offices and Avins says heโs โtaught very random people with very random skillsets over the phoneโ how to replace parts.
There are broader applications for the brewer beyond specialty cafes and private offices. Low-temperature brewing at 100ยบF produces a similar profile to cold brew within eight minutes. Customer Dandelion Chocolate created cacao nib coffee with the Cyclops. And another customer uses the machine to brew a concentrate for a single-origin coffee ice cream.
At the moment, Voga is still a small but nimble operation. The machines are hand-assembled in an Oakland warehouse and then shipped globally. Thereโs a three- to four-week turnaround on orders and on top of a network of techs, customers have a direct line to the co-founders.
Voga and the Ground Control Cyclops hope to change the industryโs perspective on batch from being a utilitarian necessity to being an important, even vibrant, part of the cafe business. Salomon says, โWeโre trying to create a business tool that fundamentally changes our customerโs businesses and allows them to dramatically enhance the experience of their customers.โ
โIf you care enough about your batch to do an excellent job, then you care about your customer,โ he added. โYou care about your quality.โ Itโs time to put your batch brewer front and center.
Jenn Chenย (@TheJennChen)ย is a San Franciscoโbased coffee marketer, writer, and photographer. Read moreย Jenn Chen on Sprudge.
Some photos courtesy of Voga.
