Understanding the Clover Coffee Maker's Mechanism

While you’re waiting in line at your local café, listen closely to the orders around you. You’ll likely hear an array of intricate espresso choices, like nonfat vanilla lattes or peppermint mochas topped with whipped cream. Busy baristas are making sure everything is just right—espresso shots pulled, milk steamed, all to deliver your ideal coffee experience. Meanwhile, drip coffee often sits quietly in a pot, waiting. It’s affordable, reliable, and does the job when you need a caffeine fix, but it’s rarely the star of the show.

Enter the Clover coffee maker, designed to bring sophistication to drip coffee. Created in 2005 by the Seattle-based Coffee Equipment Company, the Clover brews one cup at a time, unlike traditional batch brewing. With it, both baristas and customers can fine-tune their coffee by adjusting water temperature and brew time to create a personalized experience.

The result isn’t your typical coffee that’s doctored with milk or sugar, and it certainly isn’t instant. The Clover has become a vehicle for showcasing premium beans from around the world, some priced at nearly a hundred dollars per pound. Coffee enthusiasts use terms like earthy, citrusy, and spicy to describe the flavors, while others may point out floral notes or call out a grassy taste. Café owners have found that customers are willing to pay a premium for these high-quality drip coffees, often comparable to the cost of a latte.

In 2006, the Clover coffee maker debuted on the market, with around 100 units sold to independent coffee shops. By the following year, sales had tripled [source: The Economist]. Finding a Clover coffee maker in your area might have been as rare as spotting a four-leafed clover. However, you may start seeing them more frequently. In March 2008, Starbucks acquired the Coffee Equipment Company, meaning all future Clovers will be exclusive to Starbucks locations.

What does this mean for the coffee world? Does the Clover truly brew superior coffee, and if so, would you be willing to pay five dollars for a cup? What makes this machine stand out from your home coffee maker? On the next page, we’ll explore the inner workings of the Clover.

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Clover Coffee: An Evolution of French Presses and Vacuum Pots

The flavor of your coffee hinges on two key factors: how the beans are roasted and how the brew is prepared. Roasting unlocks the flavor potential in the coffee bean, while grinding and brewing refine the beans to maximize their taste. With the Clover, you gain control over two crucial brewing elements that influence flavor: the water temperature and the dwell time, or the duration the grounds are immersed in water.

The Clover employs a proportional integral derivative (PID) controller to ensure precise water temperature every time. Even a slight temperature change can make the difference between a muddy cup and one that perfectly brings out the bean's flavor. If the water is too hot, the beans will be overextracted, resulting in bitterness; too cool, and the coffee will be under-extracted, yielding a weak brew.

The Clover also lets you precisely adjust the time the grounds spend steeping in the water, ensuring the brewing process brings out the best qualities of the coffee. Let’s see how this method stacks up against other brewing techniques.

Most people have an automatic drip coffee maker sitting on their kitchen counter—it's quick, convenient, and gets them going in the morning. However, while it’s functional, it’s unlikely to win any awards for flavor. Drip machines fail to heat water enough or steep the grounds long enough to create an exceptional cup of coffee.

For the finest coffee, experts have long advocated for using a French press or vacuum brewer. Both methods offer more control over water temperature and brewing time than an automatic drip machine. In a French press, the grounds steep in nearly boiling water for several minutes. The press features a plunger attached to a mesh filter, which separates the brewed coffee from the grounds. When the plunger is pushed down, the grounds sink, and the brewed coffee is poured from the top.

Vacuum pots are designed around the air vacuum created between two connected globes that helps draw the brewed coffee down. The bottom globe is heated, causing the water inside to expand. As the vapor rises, it creates pressure that pushes the water into the top globe, where the ground coffee waits. The vapor also heats the water and coffee, stirring it for optimal brewing. Once the heat is removed from the bottom globe, the brewed coffee falls back down, leaving the grounds behind in the filter.

How does this relate to the Clover’s brewing process? The Clover combines the best of both methods with its patented VacuumPress Technology. Brewing takes place in a steel cylinder atop a piston. At the start of brewing, the piston moves to its lowest position, and a drain valve at the bottom seals shut. After steeping, an actuator forces the piston upwards, carrying the used grounds in a perforated mesh, similar to a French press in reverse. As the piston rises and the drain valve remains closed, a vacuum forms, drawing the brewed coffee down. The piston then descends, the drain valve opens, and the coffee is dispensed into your cup.

Next, we’ll explore the other factors involved in brewing coffee with the Clover.

Making Clover Coffee

You might have imagined the Clover as an unattractive contraption of pistons and valves, but in reality, it’s a sleek and visually captivating machine that turns coffee brewing into an enjoyable spectacle. Despite its advanced VacuumPress Technology and PID controllers, the Clover still relies on the skill of a talented barista. Let’s take a look at the step-by-step process of brewing coffee with the Clover, from start to finish.

We’re not using instant coffee with the Clover, as we’ve mentioned earlier. The café customer likely has a selection of whole beans to choose from, with the hope of a knowledgeable barista guiding them. Let’s say the customer picks Kenyan beans and orders an 8-ounce cup. The barista will refer to a tip sheet, optimized by Clover and the café owners, detailing the ideal settings to brew the perfect cup from these beans. The Clover features a knob on the front that allows the barista to adjust settings such as cup size, brew time, and water temperature.

The barista doses the beans, measuring them before grinding them fresh. Any mistake in the process, whether from human error or a malfunctioning grinder, could disrupt the ideal cup of coffee the Clover promises. The grind size determines how much flavor can be extracted, varying by bean and depending on the brewing time.

Once ground, the coffee is placed into the brew chamber at the top of the machine. This chamber serves as a filter atop a piston. Behind it is a water boiler, and water is poured into the chamber from a spigot. The barista stirs the mixture, ensuring that the grounds are evenly moistened. This step, too, involves human influence, and baristas often debate the best stirring techniques to optimize flavor extraction. Stirring ensures that all the grounds are thoroughly wet, enhancing the flavor extraction process.

The brewing process then begins. From the outside, all you can see is the coffee bubbling up and down, but as we discussed earlier, pistons are moving, pushing the grounds up, and coffee is being drawn out through valves. The entire brewing process takes around 40 seconds [source: Clover]. Once finished, the grounds form a cake at the top, which can be easily scraped into the waste bin.

The Clover stands out for its quick brewing and effortless cleanup, especially when compared to the bulkier French presses and vacuum brewers. However, even if you swear by your French press or vacuum brewer, the Clover’s edge lies in its ability to control various aspects of the brewing process. Once you identify the ideal temperature and brewing time for your perfect cup, you can recreate that exact experience each time. Gone are the days of blaming a bad cup on overheated water or steeping it for too long. The Clover has precise settings for every coffee bean, ensuring the best extraction every time.

We’ve been discussing how the Clover can craft the perfect cup of coffee, but what exactly are you supposed to taste? Why does it matter if you brew a coffee from Kenya differently than one from Sumatra? On the next page, we’ll dive into what makes coffee beans so special and how their origins influence the flavor.

Tasting Clover Coffee

So what if the Clover can create the perfect cup of coffee? Isn’t the point just to get a caffeine kick? Well, consider this: coffee beans have over 800 distinct flavor profiles, compared to just 400 in red wine. This might make you rethink your approach to your cup of joe [source: Gourmet Coffee Zone]. The Clover’s ability to unlock these flavors could elevate coffee into a gourmet experience, much like wine.

The key factors in evaluating coffee's taste and flavor are its acidity and body. Acidity prevents your coffee from tasting overly bitter or sour, often described as the "brightness" that gives your tongue a slight tingle [source: Merchants of Green Coffee, Coffee University]. Body refers to the sensation of the coffee in your mouth. Typically, coffees with higher acidity tend to have a lighter body. Additionally, the aroma and finish play significant roles in assessing the overall coffee flavor.

As mentioned earlier, roasting is what brings flavor to a coffee bean. Coffee beans are roasted at high temperatures for varying durations; longer roasting times and higher temperatures lead to darker roasts. The heating process caramelizes the sugars, producing oils that contribute to coffee's taste. Generally, medium roasts offer the fullest flavor, while darker roasts often lose some of their original flavor, sometimes even becoming bitter if overroasted.

When you order coffee at Starbucks, you're likely drinking a dark roast, but many Clover enthusiasts believe the machine could help bring lighter and medium roasts into the spotlight, offering more complexity and flavor. Brewing extracts the flavorful oils from the grounds, and the elements you can control with the Clover, like the water volume, water temperature, and brewing time, are some of the key factors that influence flavor.

To put it simply, while the Clover is renowned for making delicious coffee, it's not a miracle worker for turning poor coffee into good coffee. Instead, it helps baristas extract the best flavors that are already present. The barista still controls important elements like the correct bean measurement and grind size. While we may still be discovering the full potential of flavor in coffee beans, the Clover is a powerful tool to help us unlock it.

Clover coffee makers have cultivated a community of experimentalists, replacing test tubes with coffee cups and body parts with beans. These 'mad scientists' are not trying to reanimate creatures, but rather perfect the art of brewing coffee. Adjusting the temperature or stirring the grounds in unique ways could lead to the ideal cup, and once discovered, the Clover’s settings allow you to save that brew so it can be recreated consistently.

Interested in bringing a Clover into your kitchen to brew exceptional coffee? We might have overlooked one important detail: the price. The Clover comes with a hefty price tag of $11,000. Curious about the market for these high-end machines? You’ll find more on that in the next section.

Purchasing a Clover Coffee Maker

In just a few years, several hundred Clover coffee makers were sold to cafes worldwide. According to a retail coffee consultant, a coffee shop typically invests around $50,000 in equipment, with about a quarter of that going toward an espresso machine [source: The Economist]. Conventional commercial brewers usually cost between $1,000 and $4,000 [source: Robison], but the custom-built Clover is priced at $11,000 [source: Adams].

Is it worth the investment? Clover's website featured a profit calculator that helped café owners evaluate if purchasing the Clover machine would ever lead to a return on investment. The calculator considered factors such as the ability to charge more per cup for better-quality coffee, reduce waste by only brewing what was ordered, and boost whole bean sales by allowing customers to sample the beans before buying the full bag.

Clover asserts that every café that raised their prices for coffee brewed with this machine was successful, as customers valued the improved freshness and flavor [source: Clover]. How much higher were these prices? In Pittsburgh, prices ranged from $2.30 to $4.80 for a 12-ounce cup [source: Carter]. Smiling Goat Organic Espresso Bar in Canada garnered attention for charging $20 for coffee brewed with Panama Hacienda La Esmeralda beans, which cost $130 per pound in the U.S. [source: Mandel].

Clover recommended that cafés let customers sample these high-end beans to entice them into purchasing an entire pound. And since the brewing process took about a minute longer than simply pouring from a carafe, it gave baristas an opportunity to educate customers about what they were drinking and suggest other beans they might enjoy. However, for some, that extra minute may be too much, particularly in fast-paced downtown cafés catering to people on the go [source: Carter].

In addition to brewing superior coffee, Clover provided technology to monitor consumption in real-time at cafés. CloverNet is a web-based software system that tracks which drinks were made and by whom, allowing café owners to identify their most popular beans and top-performing baristas. CloverNet also allowed the input of brewing specifications for particular beans, so if a café owner perfected a specific Ethiopian coffee, the system could instantly pull up those settings, saving the barista from needing to manually adjust the machine each time.

One of Clover's notable clients was a little-known company based in Seattle called Starbucks. In March 2008, Starbucks made a deal with Clover that created a buzz in the coffee world, even more electrifying than caffeine itself. Keep reading to discover what the excitement was all about.

Starbucks and Clover

In early 2008, Starbucks tested the Clover machines. The company priced a cup of Clover coffee at $2.50 in Seattle stores, compared to $1.55 for the regular drip coffee [source: Robison]. Clearly, the test results were positive, as Starbucks soon after acquired the Coffee Equipment Company for an undisclosed amount. From then on, all future Clovers would be available in Starbucks locations.

For Starbucks, acquiring Clover was part of a strategy to bring back a more genuine coffee shop experience. In a 2007 memo, CEO Howard Schultz admitted that Starbucks had lost some of the "romance and theater" of coffee culture in recent years [source: Robison]. However, it wasn’t just that — Starbucks’ stock had dropped by about 50% in the 15 months before the Clover announcement [source: Stone]. The acquisition was part of a broader effort to revamp the company, including the introduction of a new coffee blend and upgraded espresso machines [source: Stone].

The exact number of stores that will feature Clovers is still uncertain, but for coffee enthusiasts eager to experience this flavorful brew, wider availability is certainly a positive. However, independent cafes that embraced the Clover early on feel as though the Coffee Equipment Company has sold out to a corporation, causing some coffee aficionados to turn up their noses in disapproval.

Clover enthusiasts are concerned that the individual attention and focus on each cup that the machine provides will be diluted in the rush of a high-traffic store, despite Schulz's ambitions to reintroduce the 'romance and theater' of coffee making. While the Clover can be programmed for consistency, it remains a barista-driven machine, and adjusting the brew settings requires expertise. Will the coffee scientists who love experimenting with the machine’s settings still have the opportunity to tinker?

One independent café, Stumptown Coffee in Portland, Ore., decided to phase out its Clovers rather than pay Starbucks for repairs [source: Gunderson]. There’s even speculation that current owners might not get much more from Starbucks in terms of support. Although Starbucks has pledged to honor warranties and provide necessary parts, it's unclear how long this will continue, and existing owners will not receive any further training [source: Price].

For coffee shops using Clover to track sales and earnings, CloverNet became part of Starbucks' portfolio. As of the latest updates, current Clover owners were expected to lose access to the software by mid-May 2008, though Clover promised to back up their data and offer a copy of it to store owners.

One coffee industry analyst viewed Starbucks' acquisition of the Clover not as a move to compete with independent coffee shops, but as a strategic push against McDonald's and Dunkin' Donuts, who had recently expanded their coffee and espresso offerings. By utilizing Clovers, Starbucks can dominate the 'fresh coffee' market, offering a cup made to order on the spot. Given that 'freshness' is a strong marketing concept — who wants anything stale? — Starbucks is well-positioned to guarantee this coveted trait for its customers [source: Price].

In an e-mail sent to the New York Times, a founder of the Coffee Equipment Company admitted that it’s natural for early Clover users to feel frustration and resentment. However, he also noted that there's a growing sense of excitement about what having a Clover in every Starbucks could mean for coffee enthusiasts [source: Meehan]. So, if you're a serious coffee lover, it might be worth keeping an eye out for Clovers in Starbucks—it could be a much luckier discovery than finding a four-leaf clover.

More information about the Clover and the world of coffee is brewing on the next page.