photo credit: srqpix

Ingredients

• 1/2 oz. irish creme syrup
• 1/2 oz. hazelnut syrup
• 2 shots espresso
• steamed milk
• whipped cream

Put syrups in cup, add espresso and steamed milk, stir. Top with whipped cream and top with festive green sprinkles.

photo credit: YGC Photo

Need an afternoon pick-me-up but don’t want candy.  Here is a latte that has a rich chocolate and caramel taste similar to a Milky Way candy bar.  This recipe is for a 16 oz. drink.

Ingredients

• 1 oz. chocolate syrup
• 1 oz. caramel syrup
• 2 shots espresso
• steamed milk
• whipped cream

Put syrups in cup, add espresso and steamed milk, stir.  Top with whipped cream and sprinkle with some chopped chocolate pieces.

photo credit: LabyrinthX

Having signature drinks keeps your customers from getting bored.  Offer daily or weekly specials and be sure to add your own unique touch.  Here’s a great recipe to get you in the holiday spirit.  This recipe is for a 16 oz. drink.

Ingredients

• 1/4 oz. white chocolate syrup
• 1 oz. peppermint syrup
• 2 shots espresso
• steamed milk
• whipped cream

Put syrups in cup, add espresso and steamed milk, stir.  Top with whipped cream and decorate top with crushed candy canes or hang mini candy cane over the side.

1. Your water isn’t hot enough.  Cool or cold water won’t extract the flavor and color from the coffee.
2. You aren’t using enough coffee.  You need anywhere from 1.25 oz to 3 oz of coffee to brew a 64 oz pot of coffee on most commercial coffee brewers depending on the coffee and the grind.
3. Your coffee machine is missing the sprayhead.

Quick Test:

Let’s start with the most common reason you might have weak coffee and that is your coffee brewer’s sprayhead is missing.  What is a sprayhead?  A sprayhead is a small plastic or metal round part that has little holes in it, like a shower head, and threads on it.  It screws onto your coffee brewer right above where the brew basket goes.  The sprayhead spreads the water across the coffee grounds and ensures that the grounds are equally saturated with hot water during the brew cycle.

It is a common item to turn up missing as sometimes people will take it off to clean then either forget to put it back on or it doesn’t get put on tight.  If it isn’t on tight, after a few brews it can work its way loose and fall into the grounds.  When you empty the spent grounds into the garbage, out goes the sprayhead too.

Look at your brewer.  Take out the brew basket and look for a sprayhead.  If it’s there great.  If not, you can order one by calling us or sending us an email.

Now, if your sprayhead is there it’s time to check the next item and that is the water brewing temperature.  Make sure the coffee brewer is at the hottest temperature it will get to.  How will you know?  Listen to the sound of the water heating.  It sounds like a low rumble.  If you don’t hear it, your machine isn’t heating anymore.

Leave the empty brew basket on the machine without a filter or coffee and put an empty pot under it.  Start a pot of hot water brewing without coffee in the brew basket.   Take a digital kitchen thermometer and hold it under the stream of water coming out of the brew basket.  The temperature should be between 199°F – 206°F at sea level and about 2°F less per 1,000 ft. of elevation above sea level.  You want the water hot but not boiling.

If the temperature on your machine is hot enough and falls within the guidelines above it’s time to move on to the next test.  If your water isn’t hot, you need to adjust the thermostat.  Most commercial brewer thermostats are located under the top lid of the machine or under the plate behind where the brew basket is.

Remember, your machine has electricity running through different parts and if you are not comfortable with electricity and know which parts to stay away from I suggest you unplug your machine before continuing.

You need to remove the top or front plate of the machine.  You should see a small box with a T, knob or just a stem sticking out of it.  Turn the knob or stem up just a little bit.  I recommend that you put the top back on the machine if you have a machine with a warmer on the top.  You don’t want to short out the warmer on the sides of the machine.  Plug the machine back in and let it heat up.  Try brewing again with just water.    Test the water temperature and see if it is hot enough.  Keep testing like this until you reach the desired temperature.  Once the correct temperature is reached, put the machine back together and try brewing a pot of coffee.  Your coffee should be stronger now.

So, if you have checked both the sprayhead and the water temperature and they are okay, the only other reason your coffee is weak is the coffee.  You may not be using enough coffee, have too course a grind or the coffee may not be fresh.  Weigh out the amount of coffee you are using to brew.  Try adding more to it, weigh it so you know how much you are using, then brew a pot.  Is it stronger?  If the coffee now looks and tastes like coffee, the problem was just that you weren’t using enough coffee.

The coffee grind has a lot to do with the brew as well.  The finer the coffee is ground, the long period of time water stays in contact with the grounds and the stronger the coffee will be.  Be careful though, brewing with coffee that is ground too fine can lead to the water overflowing the brew basket because the fine coffee clogs up the filter.  The other problem with really finely ground coffee is that your coffee may taste bitter.

What if the coffee isn’t too fine and it is still not strong enough?  Try brewing with different coffee.  All coffee tastes different so you may have to brew several different types before you find one you are happy with.

As always, let me know if you have any questions about this article or about your commercial beverage equipment and I’ll try to give you some help.

Alfaroo Tech:  This is a problem because you may be causing damage to your machine without knowing it.  First, unplug your machine.  I mean, unplug it right now.

Let’s go over how a commercial pourover coffee machine works.  Inside the machine is a water tank with a heating element in it.  The tank is large and holds about 2-1/2 pots worth of water.  When the tank is full of water and you pour a pot of cold water in to brew, the new pot of cold water forces the same amount of hot water out of the tank.  So, you can see that the water you pour in is not the water that brews the coffee this time.  Home brewers don’t work this way.  Home coffee brewers brew only the water you pour into them right now.

When you first get a pourover you need to fill the tank with water.  With the machine unplugged put an empty pot on the warmer under the empty brew basket.  Next, fill another pot or pitcher with cold water and pour it in the top of the machine.  Give it a minute to go into the tank and see if water starts to fill the empty pot.  If not, add another pot of clean cold water.  Two and a half pots should do the trick.  Once the tank is full you can plug in the machine and let it warm up.

Plugging the machine in without the tank being full of water will damage the heating element, the thermostat and will likely burn out the limit thermostat.  The heating element needs to be completely submerged in water to work properly.  That is why it is vital to fill the tank before you plug it in.

Since you already had the machine plugged in with a partially full tank it may not heat.  If that is the case most likely the little limit thermostat burned out.  That is actually a good thing.  The limit thermostat is there to protect your machine from getting too hot and catching on fire.  Limit thermostats are inexpensive and easy to replace.  Drop us an email if you need a limit thermostat and we can ship it to you.

Do you have questions about your commercial beverage equipment?  Send us a message through the link in the technical box on the right.  We will try to answer your question either via email or by making a post on this site.

Chances are you have used a pourover coffee brewer at one time or another. Most home coffee brewers fall under this category as well as some commercial brewers. In a nutshell, a pourover brewers do not require plumbing. A pourover brewer works by you pouring cold water in the top and the coffee brews immediately.

One benefit to pourover coffee brewers is that they are portable. This brewer is a great option when having meetings in conference rooms or offices where you may need to move the brewer from room to room.

Another benefit is that pourovers require no plumbing so you can use them almost anywhere you have power and access to clean cold water. In addition, commercial pourover pot brewers can generally brew about 5 pots of coffee an hour which is plenty for most offices and small restaurants.
These brewers come in many different configurations. Some brewers have multiple warmers to keep the coffee hot once it is brewed. There are brewers that don’t have any warmers that are meant to be used to brew into airpots. Airpots allow you to transport the coffee to remote locations and they keep the coffee hot and fresh much longer than a regular pot.

Commercial pourover coffee brewers last many more years than a home machine will.We have seen brewers in the field that are more than 15 years old and running just as strong as they did when they were installed. The best way to keep your brewing working great is to pour only cold clean water into the tank to brew. Wipe down the machine every day including the area under the brew basket that holds the coffee with a wet towel.

Do you need help figuring out what kind of coffee brewer will work best for your application? Give us a call or drop us an email and we can help you identify what will work best for you.

Your espresso machine won’t brew on one side so you call for service.  Your technician tells you that the gigleur is clogged and it can’t be serviced onsite, the machine has to be removed and taken to the shop.  Turns out minerals have been building up and now the repair is going to cost several hundred dollars to get the minerals stripped out of the espresso machine.  What happened?

Your machine has lots of plumbing, a big tank and really small orifices that the water has to go through.   It doesn’t take much for these parts to get clogged due to minerals in the water.  Why would you want to spend hundreds of dollars a year for repairs plus lose hundreds of dollars of income when your machine breaks due to mineral build up.  Mineral build up in your machine can be eliminated by installing one piece of equipment – a water softener.  We’re not talking about a whole building system, just one that works specifically for your espresso machine.

An espresso machine water softener gets installed between the incoming water supply and the espresso machine or espresso machine pump.  It’s a pretty easy installation by you or a technician and after the initial purchase will cost about $14 a year to maintain.  This is cheap insurance against service calls because of mineral build up but just like a car, you must follow monthly maintenance instructions in order to reap the benefits.

The water softener works by letting the hard water sit in what looks like tiny little orange fish eggs but are actually resin beads.  The resin beads have soft sodium / potassium ions attached to them. When the water comes in contact with the resin beads an ion exchange happens where the sodium / potassium ions that are attached to the resin beads trade places with the hard mineral ions in the water. The resin beads hold on to all of the hard mineral ions throughout the month then when you regenerate the softener with ice cream making rock salt, the salt helps the resin beads release the hard mineral ions and replace the sodium / potassium ions. Then the resin beads are ready to soften more water.

A water softener will set you back about $150 – $250 initially but the costs in the future are less than $20 a year and about 1-1/2 hours a month to maintain.

We see this happen over and over again.  You may think you will get a better deal from a private party but if you live in a cold area you have to make sure that the equipment hasn’t ever been left in an unheated area.  Even leaving the machine in the car overnight can render it useless.

Espresso machines have tanks that are very difficult if not impossible to completely drain the water from without special equipment.  Coffee brewers can be emptied but most people don’t know how to do it.  All parts for most espresso machines are readily available except for the tanks.  So when the tank on your espresso machine is damaged, the machine is toast.

Your best bet if you are going to buy a used machine from a private party is to ask them to test it in front of you.  You don’t want to find out weeks later that your dream machine is nothing more than a boat anchor.  Worse yet, you may not be able to contact the party you purchased it from to get your money back.

One of our customers bought a used machine from a restaurant that had gone out of business.  When the machine was being installed they found out the machine had freeze damage.  They got a hold of the person they purchased their espresso machine from they were told “no refund” because the previous owner had already spent the money.  They don’t have a lot of recourse since the machine was sold as is and was untested.

Your best bet is to find a seller who is able to hook up the machine and prove to you that it works or to buy from a company like ours that specializes in refurbished equipment and offer warranties so you don’t get stuck with a useless piece of junk.