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Recently at the SCAA conference in Houston, Texas, Richard Muhl caught up with Mark Barnett, founder of Synesso, to talk about the birth of Synesso and the Next Generation Machine.

RM: We’re here at the 2011 SCAA in Houston, Texas. I’m with Mark Barnett, owner and inventor of the Synesso coffee machine. Mark, tell me a little bit about the origins of the Synesso and how you got started.

MB: My start was with La Marzocco (LM), and LM was going to bring in equipment for Starbucks use. We hate to use the big green company as the start to everything that takes place, but Starbucks is really what brought LM to the United States. So, the production required to support a company the size of Starbucks was much greater than the Italian company could manage, so the folks that were going to bring in LM decided to purchase LM instead, and they hired me to copy the LM equipment and manufacture here in the U.S.

RM: So what was your main role at LM?

MB: The main role was design and development and reproducing the piece of equipment that LM was producing in Italy, here in the States. So with a quite a bit of effort, we produced that machine for Starbucks for several years, and as the company developed its relationship with Starbucks, the production went pretty well without me, and then we started working other products. We developed the Swift grinder. It was about a three year project and it’s the first of its kind; fully automatic, put the portafilter in, push the button, get a dose and tamp that’s accurate within a half a gram. And that’s a first of its kind product for LM.

RM: What sort of technical innovations does the Synesso have?

MB: The Synesso launch was basically from the point where Starbucks didn’t want to use the LM product any longer; they wanted to use automatic machines. The entire time I worked for LM, the industry was asking for temperature stable equipment. They wanted plus or minus a degree, or plus or minus a degree and a half of temperature stability, and lots of people were bringing ideas in to LM. David Schomer from Vivace was a big leader in asking for temperature stability, and the market was really driven to get this temperature stable machine. So, as the LM product stopped being made for Starbucks, LM in the U.S. shut down, and I ended up with a lot of years of developing stable equipment ideas that were never really implemented into the LM products. And I found that I should try to have an attempt at making my own espresso machine. So with about a year of research and development and prototype building and drawing, I developed the first crude prototype of Synesso machine, and the people in the market that learned it was being developed were showing up on a really regular basis and helping and giving lots of ideas, and when we had the prototype running, David Schomer himself shows up and test drove our prototype, loved it. Blogged about it that night, and by the next morning we had people ringing the phone asking how to buy the new machine.

RM: How have you found that in the years since then, how has the industry, the market, responded to you introducing this temperature stability?

MB: The market has been fantastic about the temperature stability. It’s, the stability, has ended up being plus or minus about three quarters of one degree Fahrenheit, and that’s measured right on the coffee puck, that’s not just watching a PID control. It’s been a game changer for the market. The bean products that have been roasted, the roasters now have a product that they can test their roasted beans and they can do it in a consistent fashion. With the consistent ability to brew coffee, now the roasters can fine tune better what they’re getting. And I think the level of even green coffees and other things have come way up, because now the roasters know what to ask for.

RM: I know that you have been developing some of the pressure features in the new machine being launched. What do you make of the hype, or all of the industry talk of the pressure profiling?

MB: The initial pressure issues were really important to get past. Once the temperature was stable, then the next thing to pick on is if you have a machine with three group heads, and you are trying to brew on one or two group heads at the same time, one group head is no issue, second group head you lose a little pressure, third group head you lose a little more, or if a steam tank fills; these kinds of things were really causing pressure drops on each and every espresso that is trying to brew, and it was failing the shots. So we made a machine that had an individual pump and motor for each of the groups so that it didn’t matter what you did or how you handled the machine, you got consistent pressure every time. This gave a little more stable platform, and at that point, people started saying maybe we could control the pressure. Maybe we could be a little slower in with the pressure and we could be ramping up and maybe ramping down at the end. A lot of people like the lever machines because the lever machines give you a gentler start up, and then it gives you a reduced pressure throughout the shot. And then it also gives you a little air push right at the end of the shot. So there’s an attempt to get to a lever style pressure profile. So what we’ve done is come up with a series of ramping systems that allow us to have as long and slow of initial ramp up time as you’d like to get up to your brew pressure, and then you have the ability to shift off the brew pressure again to a ramp down at the end of the shot, and slow the shot a little bit at the end, simulating that of a lever style machine.

RM: What’s your thoughts on the pressure profiling systems that modulate the pressure throughout the shot, that are currently becoming available?

MB: I think that modulating of the pressure is not going to produce what we’re trying to get to. I think it’s a steady ramp in, a holding of the pressure, and a steady ramp down. By turning pressure up and down on the shot, you’re releasing the pressure on the puck and you might allow the puck to expand and contract during the shot, and in doing the expansion and contraction, you’re going to get settling of fines, and a lot of the things that I don’t think you want to have happen during the brewing process. It’s a very new technology so I know a lot of us are working and trying to figure out exactly how to use it, but it’s my opinion at this point, that we’re looking for steady, gentle pressure rises, and the ability to gently ease the pressure at the end of the shot. And you don’t really want to modulate at all during the shot.

RM: How important do you think repeatability is in all of these variables that you can apply to the coffee?

MB: Repeatability is absolutely critical. It’s the temperature stability of working with pressure. Once you’re absolutely repeatable with the temperature, then you have to be repeatable on the pressure, and if you’re repeatable, then you can get your same result every time, and you can decide, “am I getting what I want or not,” and then you can change your input perimeters or your roasts and different bean types and you can alter the coffee itself, and get your results.

RM: So, where do you think espresso machine technology goes in the future? What’s your thoughts on the future developments and possibilities? Is there much ahead of us do you think, or are we plateauing?

MB: I think that there is a lot ahead of us. It’s hard to say exactly what is ahead of us. The technology that’s just developed is going to create a huge surge of new questions asked. And I think from those new questions asked we’re going to figure out what to do next. Whether that’s temperature profiling, maybe there’s a big potential that what we need is a little hot spike at the beginning of the shot to help the coffee puck to accelerate itself up to the brew temperature. I suspect that might be a real benefit. I don’t really know, but it might be the next thing to look at.

For the full interview followed by an indepth run through of new features see the video below:

Synesso Interview from Five Senses Coffee on Vimeo.