The one day of the week when I am most likely to look at the paper is not Sunday, although we do have a ritual of spending a couple of hours drinking coffee, eating breakfast, and reading the Sunday Times (which the cat will inevitably sit on).

Wednesday is the day that I most eagerly await, to see what the Times has published in the Dining section. Today's section was a superlative specimen. To begin with, there was a 2/3 page cover shot of fondue, with is like a sexy centerfold if you appreciate cheese-as-porn, as I do. Then below the fold there was the headline "At Last, A $20,000 Cup of Coffee." Since I work in coffee, and appreciate coffee as cheese, that is, as porn, I was intrigued by this article. It seems that a Japanese company has created a high-tech siphon machine called the "Siphon Bar" which they sold to a San Francisco cafe for an astonishing $20k. For those fortunate few who have tried coffee from the Clover, which I wrote about here last summer, this is an interesting development.

The Clover was the first revolutionary coffee brewing system in a long time. I actually couldn't think of a technological development as unique as the Clover, except for perhaps pulse brewing, by which coffee brewers meter out water in "pulses", or mini batches--allowing the coffee to "bloom"--instead of dumping the water on top all at once. It is interesting that the Siphon Bar is bringing a unique machine to market so quickly after the Clover. (Of course, the NYT is a year or two late in reporting the arrival of the Clover, so I don't actually know how timely their reportage of the Siphon Bar is...).

Photo by Peter DaSilva for the NY Times (Used without permission. Thanks NYT!)

The Siphon Bar works as halogen lamps heat water in a globe; gas expansion forces steam into the upper chamber where water and coffee grounds are stirred with a bamboo paddle, creating a vortex (this is apparently the step that most challenges the barista's skills); when the carafes are removed from the heat, gas contraction creates a vacuum in the bottom globe, drawing the coffee back through, leaving the grounds and sediment behind. This method of brewing is common in its variations (coffee aficionados will recognize the globes as being similar to the Bodum "Santos"), though it seems this machine is the first to do it so scientifically, with heat provided by halogen lamps, and meters to measure time and temperature. I suspect that the Siphon Bar, while being an exciting and flashy addition to barista's tool shed, will not become exceptionally widespread unless the cost comes down considerably. What is most significant about the arrival of machines such as the Clover and the Siphon Bar is not that you will see them any time soon at your neighborhood coffee bar, but that they signify (one may infer) that brewed coffee is on the rise again. That is to say that coffee in one of its purest forms is taking a stand for itself in a market that has been dominated by the postmodern percs characteristic of the Starbuckian Era: oversized, oversweet, overmilky, overpriced 'coffees' that have nothing to do with coffee.

If you search "siphon bar" you will find many posts at tech and coffee sites, with the commentors wildly praising and criticizing this new device.
Click here for the NY Times article