How has technology influenced coffee culture?

Advanced technology has not only influenced coffee growing and production but also affected baristas, customers, and, of course, making a cup at home.

Coffee Growing

The precise monitoring of coffee plants, including temperature, humidity, and soil conditions, helps growers to produce the best plants and yields with greater consistency. 

Mechanical harvesters were first used in Brazil in the 1960s to assist producers with picking ripe cherries.

Unmanned aerial vehicles can also be useful tools for producers, as many coffee farmers live in remote and mountainous areas. It’s often difficult to map out farm boundaries on foot or in certain vehicles

Mobile apps can help farmers to keep track of a number of variables, such as nutrient levels in soil and quantities of fertiliser used, making consistent quality more possible.

Sharing information

A challenge of traditional coffee production is the vast distances between coffee farms and their poor infrastructure.

The use of advanced technology allows coffee producers in different farms, regions, countries, and even continents to exchange information with each other easily.

Bean quality and roasting

AI technology allows producers to understand more about the quality of their beans so they no longer have to rely on roasting and cupping coffee.

In the ever-evolving world of coffee roasting, advanced technology plays a pivotal role in ensuring consistency, precision, and efficiency.

One of the standout features of roasting machines is the dual-layer touchscreen interface. This advanced control panel allows for intuitive operation, enabling users to manage roasting profiles with ease. 

The touchscreen is designed to withstand the rigours of a roasting environment, providing durability and responsiveness. Whether you’re adjusting temperatures, monitoring roast progress, or switching between modes, the dual-layer touchscreen ensures precise control and a user-friendly experience.

If you wish, you can minimise room for human error by using a bot to accurately time coffee brewing, and a lot of coffee brewers now have integrated grinders and touchscreen displays, allowing baristas to keep their brews consistent with very little wastage.

You may wish to keep the human touch, but technology is still a key part of running any coffee shop for both baristas and customers.

Communication with customers

NFC, or near-field communication, is a way to make a payment using a smartphone via a wireless connection that uses radio waves. The customer simply swipes the phone—which contains a special communications chip—near a sensor in a payment terminal, and the money is immediately deducted from their account.

Several companies offer technologies that allow you to sell coffee without the need for staff to assist customers, but still offer a range of quality coffee types. Costa, a British coffee chain, supplies a range of branded coffee-making machines for use in retail stores that take up only a small space, but still have capabilities associated with full-blown coffee stores.

Using computer software to track purchases can also allow you to offer sophisticated loyalty card schemes.

Further reading: https://smallbusiness.chron.com/coffee-business-technology-73452.html

And finally…

After the advent of percolators and drip brewing came French presses, pour-overs, and Aeropress.

Smart technology has enabled customisable settings, pre-programmable options, and even connectivity to smartphones for remote brewing.

Another gadget you may encounter if you own an Espresso Machine is the coffee distributor, which spreads coffee grounds evenly in the basket before compacting. You have to buy a coffee distributor that matches the diameter of your portafilter. And then there’s the wire tamper …. Watch this space!

Further reading: https://sumatocoffee.com/blogs/coffee-connections/the-evolution-of-brewing-coffee-at-home