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Next week the juggernaut Specialty Coffee Association of America conference takes over Charlotte North Carolina and coffee industry types will mingle under the fluorescent bulbs, lost in a sea of biscotti peddlers, wading through acres of marketing excess. But the conference also serves to bring some of the brightest and most caffeinated minds of the impassioned fringe of “third wave” coffee together - microroasters, growers, career baristas, importers, and a small handful of gearheads who “get it” about the future of coffee.

Last week Kyle and I paid a visit to the guys at The Coffee Equipment Company, builders of the Clover, a brewing device of such precision that it throws open the doors to a whole new level of connoisseurship of single origin coffees. They are riding high on a spate of recent good press and working feverishly to prepare for their trip to Carolina where they’ll be unveiling the Clover 1s, the upgrade to the Clover 1.

We got a sneak peek at this device, and aren’t at liberty to reveal anything specific about the design changes other than to say we’re impressed and that my gadget-lusting techno-libido is tickled at these new refinements. We tried several coffees familiar and new (including the Bolivian CoE winner) and the brews it made were staggeringly good. We’ll be laying some Victrola beans on them for use in their demos in Charlotte, so be sure to check these guys out if you’re among my eleven coffee industry readers.

Obligations on the home front will unfortunately keep the Victrola crew in Seattle during the SCAA event (sparing the other barista competitors in the USBC the humiliation of being crushed by underdog Kyle’s well-practiced coffee-fu). To the many folks I had looked forward to catching up with in Charlotte, I send my regrets.

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 30th, 2006 at 8:56 pm and is filed under Coffee, General. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.