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Decent espresso5/4/2023 My favorite neighborhood in the world is… Downtime Stockholm, at 2 a.m., during the summer. Head of Man was a poster in my office while I worked, for decades. It’s so simple, yet always bears fruit upon further close viewing. If I were to buy a work of art, it would be… Vacuum packing food has allowed me to make much larger quantities of really good meals, and preserve great ingredients. The one thing in the kitchen that I can’t live without is… my Vacmaster VP210 vacuum chamber sealer. I’ve spent many years trying to recreate it, to understand the reasons why it is so amazing. It’s not so much to copy it, but to understand “how do you make a brand-new thing, that stands on its own merits, from other ingredients.” There’s a whole lifetime of savoir-faire in that drink. Lapostolle, the inventor of the Grand Marnier liquor. If I could have a drink anywhere, with anyone, it would be with… Alexandre If a contemporary artist can create a new artwork that looks like it was painted hundreds of years ago by an acknowledged old master, why is this new work not also a masterpiece? If the contemporary experts of the old master cannot tell, why isn’t the new work held to the same esteem? Does not the new artist have the same level of skill? One piece of art that has changed the way I view the world is… The “new fakes” at the Museum of Art Fakes in Vienna. While ostensibly about running a coffee shop, it’s more generally about running a retail business, with quite a bit about being an entrepreneur in a business that has hired staff. The best book I’ve read in the past year is… What I Know About Running Coffee Shops by The sculpture is finished when you can't take anything off. Seriously, it’s this expensive? But of course, it’s like I mean, look at it, and it's just like a little heating coil and a plunger. My favorite lever machine is… The Strietman. The coffee beans I use at home are from… Hong Kong’s Fineprint. The thing that gets me up in the morning is… a lack of deadlines. I can handle a lot of stress in my life, but for some reason, deadlines just cripple me with stress, I can’t sleep well, and I don’t want to get out of bed. “It doesn’t matter what your grinder is, what your bean is, the recipe will just adjust and make the best possible cup.” “The next step is to make an espresso machine that’s running software where the espresso profile mutates, as it’s learning about what's going on right now,” Buckman says. The result, The Decent espresso machine, uses tech to tell the barista, through a tablet located on the machine, what the pressure, flow rate, and temperature are in real time-three variables that aren’t normally measured in a home espresso machine, but are essential for the home barista to consistently achieve excellent results.ĭecent machines, which have achieved cult status worldwide, are just the beginning. “Instead of the craftsman sitting there watching you, could I have a machine that shows you what's going on? And could we add sensors in there?” Papers were written, experts were consulted, and a “very eccentric genius” physicist joined the team. After training with a professional barista, much like an apprentice learns alongside a craftsman, Buckman was finally making good espresso, but with a machine that cost about the same as a Rolex Submariner.īuckman embarked on a new enterprise: an affordable prosumer espresso machine that incorporated the mentoring experience. That wasn’t an easy thing to admit for this modern-day Renaissance entrepreneur, who owns Magnatune, BookMooch, and other companies focused on music and books, plays the lute and makes artisanal liqueur. “You blame the gear, or you blame yourself.” “I'm sure there’re a lot of people blowing a lot of money on this, feeling like idiots,” Buckman says. A second, more expensive machine failed to produce better results. A prosumer home espresso machine soon followed, but the espresso wasn’t any good. It was a chance visit to a tiny café in Berlin where Buckman discovered a love for good coffee-so much to quickly get sick from drinking too much.
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