I, Paul Stack, have put myself forward as a nominee for the SCAE board. Elections for members is open until April 30th.
The new board will commence duty from June 2012 for a two year term.
I have been involved with the SCAE officially for six years, co-authoring and leading the SCAE Gold Cup programme, spearheading the Gold Cup Research and being heavily involved in the design and execution of the recently launched SCAE Coffee Diploma System.
I have sat on the Education Committee for 4 years, with three of them as vice-chair.
I would like to add a voice to how the SCAE progresses strategically, ensuring clear values are agreed, objectives set and members value maximised.
My core objective would be to advance the SCAE Coffee Diploma System to have full integrity regarding curriculum relevance and delivery with tight control on all certifications. Ultimately, i would like to align the Diploma system with a recognised international university system, giving coffee proffessionals a recognised diploma or degree to furhter their careers.
If you are an SCAE member, I would greatly welcome your vote.

Paul

The Irish Aeropress Championships will take place in Marco, Sandyford Industrial Estate on Tuesday March 27th from 6:30pm.

Competitors must supply their own aeropress, filters and any other equipment required. Hot water will be available.

Competitors may use ANY coffee of their choosing.

Entry is free, and spectators are welcome. To enter simply leave your name in the comments field below.

A minimum of 8 and a maximum of 16 contestants are allowed.

The winner will receive €1000 towards flight and accommodation to represent Ireland at the World Aeropress Championships in Portland, USA on April 20th.

Thanks to our sponsors:

Marco’s involvement with the World Aeropress Championship  goes back to 2010, to WBC London, where we hosted it at the Brew Bar. Last year at HOST we worked closer than ever with Tim Varney, to give the competition a space, in a year when it looked like there might be no WAC. We are excited, nay giddy to continue this support; support of a competition that doesn’t take itself too seriously, but ultimately rewards quality.

This year we are sponsoring the UK Aeropress Championships, which take place Saturday 24th March, in Taylor St Baristas.

The winner of the UK Aeropress Champs gets to go to Portland, to compete in this year’s World Aeropress Championships on our and La Marzocco’s (our US distributor) booth at SCAA!!

The fly in the ointment, however, is this: there is no Irish Aeropress Championship. Who will represent Ireland in Portland? Right now, no one.

So we propose the following:

The Irish Aeropress Champs should be held in early April (in Marco). The winner should receive €1000 towards costs of flights and accomodation to Portland.

We are asking that 4 companies put forward €250 to cover this.

Marco will be company 1.

3 to go.

2 to go (thank you Hasbean).

1 to go (thank you CoffeeHit).

0 to go (thank you CoffeeAngel).

If you have a Coffee Refractometer I encourage you to visit this site and take part in a brewing study.

The principle of the study is that multiple participants can submit and evaluate their own brews (following the experimental procedure), and that collectively the data may (re)define taste preference and/or provide an interesting analysis of how we brew our coffee.

Do it.

Trade show season continues in style this week with Hotelympia, a trade show that promises to deliver innovation to your hospitality business. As the premiere deliverers of innovation to hospitality businesses everywhere, Marco will be there. Oh yes, we will be there.

We’ve decided to mix it up this year though. We feel rectangular booths have been done to death. So in true innovative style – TRIANGLE

As you can see this new dynamic allows for 50% more handshaking, and 25% more elbow nudging than with a rectangular booth.

Our brew bar will feature not only, delicious coffees (& Teas) and skilled baristas, but a newly skunkworked Pillar prototype. The Pillar you saw in HOST last year, featured only manual brewing wands, this version  also has an auto-brew arm – which can deliver a consistent volume of water over a programmed time through a sprayhead into any pourover device. The Pillar concept centrers around the idea of a constant head height being generated. This allows for a great deal of potential uses. In this case the auto-brew arm features a solenoid which can be programmed to open and close to a specific routine, and a ball valve to regulate flow (and the velocity/force of the spray). Because of the constant head-height the output is completely consistent. So you can put a Chemex (or other brewing device) underneath, press a button and walk away.

Of course, under the counter driving the Pillar is a modified version of one of our Ecosmart Undercounter boilers – the full range with various font options will also be there for your oogling pleasure, along with the Mini Filtro Shuttle, and all our other innovations for your hospitality business.

See you there.

Here’s a quick update to our schedule of activities for HOST. Come see us at Pavilion 9, G35.

PS – check out the HOST app in the App Store.

It may seem a trifle early to start talking about HOST, the gigantic annual hospitality exhibition held in Milan. HOST can be a long aul slog (5 full days), but we have lots of plans to break that up with, fun, interesting, new things (more on that later).

For now though, we are delighted to announce that on Sunday 23rd October we shall be HOSTing the 2011 World Aeropress Championships (last seen in London ’10) on our booth brew bar. The current plan is to kick off around 3pm and let it run until close. Who knows, some beer might appear at some point.

Full details, signups, and all that stuff over on the official site (and new rules!!!).

Big thanks to Messrs. Varney, Wendelboe and Adler.

This is going to be awesome!

The Uber Project, encompassing the Uber Boiler, Grinder and related projects are intended to function as frequently upgraded, constantly improved, collaborative efforts between our R&D team and members of the coffee industry. That was the genesis of the project, and it is where would like to see its future remain.

So on that basis, we want to redress a couple of parts of that “contract”.

1. We want to give everyone who bought an Uber Boiler the opportunity to upgrade to the latest 1.10 software version for free.

1. We want to engage with Uber users in identifying where the Uber Boiler succeeds and fails, and where users would like to see it go.

We’ve created a short survey, asking the kinds of question that would help explore the latter. In exchange for filling out this survey, you can have the former if you so wish. We will dispatch, free of charge an upgrade kit, featuring a board with the latest software and instructions. All that we ask is that you return the old board to us.

So version 1.10 brings a lot of new features, especially to those of you on versions 1.7 or lower. The major change is how the tank refills or primes. On previous versions once you finished a dispense and returned to prime, the tank completely refilled in one go, and then you had to wait until that was all brought back to temperature. This could sometimes mean long delays, just when you wanted to go straight into a second brew. With the new software the tank instead incrementally refills, maintaining a temperature close to the set point, and importantly allows you to return to dispense at any time (so long as there is a minimum of 2L in the tank).

There are a host of other smaller changes, things like a fahrenheit option, and a change to the setup menus to make them more intuitive, making boiler draining less of a chore. For now though, we want people to be able to get this if they should so want, but also to help us shape the future design.

If you haven’t already been contacted regarding this by your local agent and would be interested, please drop us a mail to info [at] marco [dot] ie – or fill out the contact form above… or carrier pigeon. Carrier pigeon entries will be treated extra special.