It may well be an easy job to do the shims but i have a real problem with manufacturers that sell stuff that isnt fit for purpose, and then are allowed to get away withy it by dumping the responsibility for rectifying it back onto the client. And then they tell you that if you do fir them and have a problem, its not their problem? Breathtakingly arrogant. When clients buy something from us and there is any form of problem anytime afterwards and the clients think we havent rectified it to their satisfaction, they scream all the way to the high court. If Breville sells something that isnt fit for purpose straight out of the box, they are allowed to get away with it.... Typical...One rule for the big guys, and another for the rest of us. Level playing field????????????? In an ideal world, you would take the machine to their registered repairer and get them t do it for you. As a claim under warranty, the job should be given priority (ie front of the line despite other machines in for repair first) and be given back to you in reasonable time....say....a couple of days, or certainly within the week max? Of course the way you get done is that you dont want to lose your machine for a period, so are essentially pushed to do the job yourslf. But if you look at it another way, the machine has never worked properly from day one. Ergo if you take it in you are not losing anything of any great value in terms of missing out on a properly made coffee...because it has never made one yet.... Thats my logic anyway. If you dont make them do it at their cost (they have to pay their repairer to do the job as the repairer is not breville and wont do it for nothing), they will not learn to fix their production and QA problems. For heavens sake, this shimming business has been going on ever since they released the grinder some years ago. Have they not learned anything? *****************************
jparnold wrote:
I spoke to the 'barista' at our local coffee shop today who advised they purchase 40kgs roasted beans every 10 days and they are roasted the same day that it is delivered but that also means the last is used 10 days after roasting. He also reckoned that Arabica beans are the best and that they are grown in high altitudes. Anyway I am getting off the track a bit.
As a pro roaster and supplier with many years experience in business, can I please note that you should not take muc notice of what some random barista says, unless the baristas bona fides are known to be without question. This is because they dont usually know much and will just say what they have been told to say or what they think they should say to keep the mystique of "good" coffee rolling along. Their field is not coffee roasting business (and all it involves) and supply, it is in running a food business and managing (or trying to) a coffee making machine. Different spheres of expertise and different industry altogether. It would be like lumping a barista into the dairy industry, because they use milk.....or as being in the meat industry because their kitchen puts out a steak... ;D It is a management and administrative nightmare to try and run a roasting business on the basis of "roast on demand", waiting for clients to place their orders because otherwise, you dont have the stock roasted to deliver. Additionally the economies of scale and costs to do that are killers in first world countries, not to mentin the constraints placed by the size of the roasting equipment in use by any particular roasting business. Add in to the equation that freshly roasted coffee needs time to "rest" and develop before it reaches any semblance of consistency or uniformity without which, it creates nothing but trouble for baristas that cant handle the large change in density (ie INconsitence) in say the first week from roasting, and cant cope with the requirement for frequent running changes in the grind setting as the coffee changes. Couple to that, that "just roasted" coffee which is by definitition per above UNdeveloped, has little character and is generally woody, astringent and foamy if used in an espresso machine. Ergo, it really does need the time to rest and develop after it has been roasted, and at a minimum for small commercial roasting I would have to say it needs atleast 4 days before being delivered, and this all governs what is the definition of fresh roasted coffee in terms of what can be delivered to a cafe business for their understanding in use, that will produce a proper result in the cup for the paying public. For these reasons, baristas that advise clients that their coffee is delivered the day of roasting are basically talking through their hat for whatever reason....could be thats what they think the clients want to hear, or what they have been told and they believe it, or....what they have been told to say regardless as in it may be a marketing policy of that cafe to push this barrow with clients. Hope that helps 🙂.
