This past weekend I had the chance to fly out to Chicago and visit the SCA or Specialty Coffee Association expo 2024.
And this year, I noticed a little bit of a trend in some of the new products, almost trying to balance a middle ground of being as automated as possible with one end of the spectrum being straight up fully automated experiences, and the other with products like the new xBloom Studio and Fellow Aiden creating an automated experience that’s still highly customizable.
Here are some of the most interesting products I found at expo this year.
Starting with the new Fellow Aiden. As one reddit comment so eloquently put it, “Fellow has cornered the upper middle class millennial coffee drinker market so hard.”
The Aiden is Fellow’s first foray into the batch brewer category, priced at $365 with a lot of new features that have yet to be explored in this category. It comes in the classic matte black finish and if I remember correctly, was told that white would be an option.
The Aiden has some really cool features between being able to switch from single serve brewer to a 10-cup batch, and allowing instant temperature adjustment so you can bloom at one temp and brew at another.
This machine allows you to control practically everything you would want including brew temperature, brew ratio, bloom ratio, bloom duration, bloom temperature, number of pulses, time between pulses, and pulse temperature.
Now for a full walkthrough of the tech details I would highly recommend watching Brian’s video featuring Nick from Fellow who gives the full rundown.
From my understanding of this machine, and to sum it up extremely plainly, it’s a batch brewer that also has the capability to operate as a single cup brewer with practically every important brewing variable being adjustable.
It follows the classic Fellow design language, incorporating the familiar display and button found on the Stagg kettles. However, the handle design did change to this C-shape which is fine, but honestly I wish it kept the Stagg style handle which in my opinion just looks a little more elegant.
I was able to do a taste test of a brew from Kyle’s September Coffee, one brewed by hand and the other by the Aiden and honestly - both were great.
For $365, this batch and single brewer combo is packing a ton of tech and cool features, and at $365 it's right up there competing against the Moccamaster, Ratio, and Breville brewers. I did have one small concern as seemingly, the majority of the parts and pieces are plastic. But, before judging it too much, hopefully I can snag one of these for a review.
Next up is the new xBloom Studio! This machine hovered around the Third Wave Water booth where I also had a chance to brew up a delicious Anaerobic Process Geisha Village from Tiny Arms Coffee Roasters. If you stopped by and had some of my brew, thank you and hope you enjoyed it.
So the xBloom Studio is the successor to the original xBloom, which was for whatever bizarre reason, announced on April Fools day - as was the Niche Duo the year prior. Companies, please stop announcing things on April Fools day.
The Studio follows a similar design language and overall shape, but with lots of new features. Instead of relying solely on the RFID tags and the phone app, there are now some dials that allow you to create a brew profile on the machine directly.
The next packaging also uses less waste by integrating the RFID tag on a card attached to each bag which is a nice touch.
The machine features the same grinder but also now has a dosing cup element that claims to have some unique properties to not need RDT at all while still eliminating all chaff, and from my initial impressions it seemed to work quite well.
It is the same burrs found on the original xBloom but with some changes that now claim this grinder can brew from espresso all the way to cold brew, and can act as a standalone grinder if you don’t want the brew functionality. Similarly, you can also use the machine as a standalone brewer if you want to use a separate grinder.
It does also have the capability to be plumbed in, making it suitable for automated brews in lets say a higher volume environment, without having to replace water frequently.
The machine also has a new app that gives you way more real-time data which is great to see, and the UI is much improved with way more functionality than the original.
One thing I did notice however is, similarly to the Aiden, it’s a lot of plastic as far as build quality goes. Again, it might not necessarily be a problem, but I’ll have to get my hands on one to try out for sure.
I heard the price will be lower than the existing xBloom model, although no specific range was given, despite all the new features and even the integrated scale I just remembered about and almost glossed over.
Given that the current model is about $800 new, I would expect this version to land in the 500 to 600 dollar price range, which would make it more compelling than a high end batch brewer given its capabilities, and the fact that it comes with a grinder.
Similar to the Aiden, both these machines seem to aim to create a fully customizable and repeatable brewing experience, while being as automated as possible. In my mind, this demographic fits into an interesting niche.
Anecdotally, most people I know that love brewing specialty coffee, or generally lighter roasted coffee, enjoy the ritualistic brewing aspect of it. That same group of people are the ones tweaking every aspect, the brew process, the temps, the grind size, the pouring method, and so on.
But, I get it. There are some mornings where you don’t want to do the whole routine and just want a good cup of coffee - and that’s where products like these slot in.
So I guess it’s just a question of a) will you actually spend the time to dial in and create recipes for each bean, then choose to set it and forget afterwards? And b) are you willing to pay for this convenience?
I do hope to get my hands on the xBloom Studio as well for a review.
And those were really my 2 top products I saw at expo, but I did want to highlight this incredibly cool robot cafe where these bots were doing everything from dosing, tamping, pulling the shot, and even doing pour overs with, well, robot like precision.
At $55,000 a piece, they obviously aren’t taking over the market anytime soon, but it is interesting to see if these become more widely adopted. I know Onyx Coffee Labs have their own robot brewing booth or cafe, I think located in an airport.
But apart from that, Expo was a ton of fun, it was great getting to go cafe hopping through the city, having a nice deep dish at Pequods as featured in The Bear, and most of all - meeting all the people I had met from Boston Expo 2 years ago and newcomers that I’ve gotten to know through social media.
So, that’s going to be my quick recap of Expo 2024, and I’m looking forward to covering this event again next year in Houston.
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