Last week, I went to the American Barista & Coffee School here in Portland, Ore., to see a presentation done by Vince Fedele of the George Howell Coffee Company (GHCC), about ExtractMoJo, a brewing control solution software that won Best New Product at this year’s SCAA conference. Mr. Fedele, who was the chief architect of the system, spent two hours explaining to a standing-room-only group of coffee professionals how ExtractMoJo works.
According to GHCC, ExtractMoJo combines a sophisticated coffee analytics software application and a specially designed, hand-held digital refractometer that enables users to quickly and simply calibrate their existing equipment to brew coffee that meets high quality, internationally recognized Gold Cup standards with cup-to-cup consistency.
It was super geeky stuff ”there was some salivating going on when the pro baristas in the room saw the way the software worked to isolate variables in coffee brewing and see the exact science applied to near perfect brewing standards.
Scott Rao, author of The Professional Barista’s Handbook, is a fan of the system, which got a lot of attention from attendees of the SCAA show in Atlanta, where it was debuted. “ExtractMojo is the most useful tool I’ve ever had to evaluate coffee extraction and brewing parameters,” says Scott. “We use it at our cafe (Cafe Myriad in Montreal) to program brewing parameters, help train our staff to taste for proper extraction levels, and troubleshoot problems, such as when our grinder burrs are getting dull.
Using MoJo we are able to produce the same sweet extraction levels across all of our brewing methods. This is a windfall for ensuring peak flavor proï¬les for all of our specialty coffees.”
You can try to software out for free by clicking on the TRY button here: http://software.terroircoffee.com/
But it seems to be pretty reasonably priced, at $99 for the Lite version. For $399, you can get the software bundled with the Coffee Refractometer ”hey, who doesn’t love a new toy?
