Thanks for this Brett. I am more than a little curious about this post and it's post date of 31/1/2014. Reason being.......I've read almost the identical post elsewhere - right down to the detail with tests using refractometers, etc. Thing is though, I read it a few months ago and I'm almost 99% sure it had the same content - but I just can't remember who the post belonged to. Even the bit about the re-engineering 5 months ago rings an ironic bell inside my head. My personal opinion about refractometer testing is "nice toy to play with, gives you some great mileage with marketing spin, creates some interesting content to bang on about, but at the end of the day there is still a lot of variability in the actual results when performing TDS analysis - unless of course you have ideal lab conditions and super-expensive testing equipment". Perhaps anyone with sub-$1K TDS kit is maybe taking a long bow to the benefits. I'm not a chemical engineer or scientist, but I know enough to be somewhat "informed". This *movement* was originally (or I should say formerly) started by Tim Wendelboe - who has done well to become a highly regarded cult hero amongst European and more specifically Scandinavian roasters (and we all know those Nordic folks are big consumers of coffee). Tim went into a deep-dive to improve the performance of his espresso. Many people are jumping on the same bandwagon (ok, I admit it.....me too). But why ? Primarily, because it forces us to look at what we are doing, pushes us into new areas of coffee science and analysis for ways in which we can improve upon what we currently do. In some countries, certain styles of coffee are more popular. If anyone has tried many of the Scandinavian Specialty coffees, they would generally summarize the beans as "light roasted and very bright" in comparison to what we are used to consuming in our own domestic market. Filter and various brew types other than espresso play a more important role in some European specialty coffee markets and the roasting styles are adapted to suit that customer base. I've arrived at the firm conclusion espresso can be delivered equally well in both styles - dark or light, but the fundamental difficulty is in the acid balance and the engineering performed during extraction. Problem is there is one almighty huge chasm between the 2 styles that tends to gobble up many a brave soul willing to step up to the plate. In relation to the article, my personal opinion is that they are doing the right thing for their business and their customers - assuming of course they can "back up the hype" with what's in the cup.
