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Product development hell : the Decent Puck Rake finally back in stock

A year ago I showed the tool that Ben and I were designing:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KxwmsGXbnFs

and the video that we made for it was quite popular (12,000 views)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HIexlhxP0Ig

Unfortunately: this meant that this new product went almost immediately out of stock.

Worse yet, getting this product to market had been from hell. We went through several companies, as all were producing incredibly low quality work. The photos of those attempts are really quite funny:
https://www.instagram.com/p/CCmHvdehGgH/

The first batch we did get, we had failed about 40% of them for poor quality.

So.... the reason for the long delay in getting this thing back in stock, is that I wanted to find a reliable, high quality supplier.

Being paranoid, I hired two temps to 100% quality check every puck rake from the new supplier that we eventually settled on. The manufacturing run was finished last week and arrived Friday.

They did, and... they failed most of them! So, Bugs and I looked at what they had rejected, and could not find any flaws. When we took the "failure here" stickers off, they couldn't identify what the reason for the failure was. In fact, the stickers seemed to be pointing at random parts of the packaging.

It seems that these two were thinking "if we approve them all, the boss will think we didn't do any work. But if we fail most of them, they'll think we are really paying attention and working hard." Sigh.

So... we're peeling the failure stickers off the packaging, and having my more experienced staff re-check them all. So far, we haven't found a single one I'd fail. The quality looks great.

The new packaging we've moved to protects the needs in transit, which previously we solved with a lot of foam, and that was not a solution I liked.

We do get a lot of emails about this item, likely because the video is popular, so I'm glad to finally have someone who can make them for me, and to have them in stock.

https://decentespresso.com/rake

-john

Coffee Folk Review of DE1
https://thecoffeefolk.com/decent-espresso/

James Hysop at Coffee Folk has written a very extensive review, covering pros & cons, and the Decent's evolution over 5 years.

Along with John Weiss 2019 review https://www.home-barista.com/blog/decent-espresso-de1-review-t57610.html and Tom Chips' (2018) https://www.home-barista.com/espresso-machines/review-of-decent-espresso-de1-pro-t52582.html and Hoffmann's (2018) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nUb5O7lQKbE&t=5s this is among the most extensive writeups.

It's interesting to note, too, that once a product comes out, even if it improves a lot, it's rare to get later reviews. The Decent has grown up a LOT in those years, so it's nice to have one that (for instance) mentions the realtime group head controller, which we introduced 2 years ago.

-john

Matte silicone steam wand sleeves now available

We now have stock of these new silicone sleeves in black and white, for both steam wand styles we make. They were mentioned 2 months ago here: https://www.home-barista.com/marketplace/decent-espresso-news-t66649-720.html#p810098

v1.43 machines will be shipping with this new style. On request, any v1.42 machine that we haven't shipped yet, we can swap the sleeve for you.

If you have an existing Decent, you can either order the sleeve from our website:
https://decentespresso.com/c?filter=sleeve

the price we charge on or shopping is only to cover our shipping & handling cost.

HOWEVER, we're also happy to include the sleeve for free, with any purchase you make from us. To make this happen, make your shopping cart, and contact us http://decentespresso.com/contact before you pay, so we can add the free sleeve to your order.

As my boxing team is super-fast, make sure you contact us before you pay, so we can include the free sleeve. If you email us after you paid, there's a good chance your order was already boxed up & shipped before one of my support team reads your email. :-O

Mohammed & I have made a video showing you how to replace the sleeve on your machine. It's a 2 minute job, and very easy.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hoSBPnM_LEU

As an aside, I don't know if I mentioned this: but a few weeks ago I programmed the website to automatically send the relevant "quick start" or "how to install" video via our tech support system, at the same time the box gets shipped out. We're working to flesh out our video catalog with these videos, so that a few minutes on Youtube, gets you started with most every product we sell.

-john

Join us again with Paul Chan and @theothermohammed for this week's zoom on Manual Flow Control using the GHC and introduction to limiter ranges. John will also join us for the 1st hour for our regular Q&A session at the start.

Feel free to pop in and ask your question in person or if you have a camera show us your workflow for feedback. We don't bite and love to hear from you guys no matter what your skill level. Of course you can always just sit back with a brew and enjoy the discussions.


Look forward in seeing you all

- San Francisco, CA, USA - Sat, 28th Aug 2021 - 18:00
- New York, NY, USA - Sat, 28th Aug 2021 - 21:00
- Melbourne, Australia - Sun, 29th Aug 2021 - 11:00
- Hong Kong Time - Sun, 29th Aug 2021 - 09:00

Zoom link: https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85718169625?pwd=U1o5T3M2RGZrRTF4S0V5bjBiTm9LQT09

Manual GHC mode, aha! moment : software pressure limiter makes it work well

I recently tasked Paul Chan with trying to pull shots manually with the Group Head Controller, like a manual lever machine might do it.

He reported back to me that he was choking the puck often, after preinfusion. A bit too much flow (easily done) moved the puck pressure beyhond 9 bar, to the 13 bar that the Decent can do.

I wondered if our Ray's Decent firmware had left the "pressure limit" feature active, once you take over from the profile on the GHC. We'd never tested it. It turns out that YES, the limiter stays active, and this is the the secret to achieving successful shots with manual control.

With the limiter, no more choked pucks as you rise preinfsion, because previously, as you're controlling flow, it was super easy to give the puck too much flow, go to 13 bar, and choke the shot. Now, the "software OPV" in the Decent stops the flow at the point needed to achieve 9 bar.

And Paul will be showing his results of his experiments on tomorrow's Zoom call.

Today's 'nightly' de1app now has a 9 bar limiter in the default "GHC/manual flow control"

Join us on Zoom in a few minutes!
https://us02web.zoom.us/j/85718169625?pwd=U1o5T3M2RGZrRTF4S0V5bjBiTm9LQT09

In today's Zoom, Decent customer Damian demonstrated his new programming work: the D-Flow profile.

I'm hugely excited by what he's done. I had mentioned a few months ago, that I wanted to see Profiles have dedicated user interfaces, specific to how that profile works. No need for every profile to require the user to fully understand it. Ask the user simpler questions, and adjust the profile accordingly. That's what Damian has done.

The core of his profile is his Londonium, which has a fast preinfusion, pressure-hold "preinfusion dripping" step, a pressure rise and extraction stage.

D-Flow give you simpler controls, such as
- temperature control of preinfusion vs extraction
- simple control over the duration of the dripping phase
- the shot stops as a ratio of the bean dose weight
- automatically sets both flow and a pressure limit, so that the espresso is "bounded" within a happy range

I suggested two features to Damian, which he seemed to like:

* a "[x] milked" checkbox, indicating this espresso is to have milk added.
- The reason for this, is that when making an espresso for milking, I change the acidity to have less acidity, typically by having a lower flow rate, and extracting less in cup. Acidity doesn't mix well with milk.
- However, an espresso w/o milk needs some acidity, or else it's boring, and pulling the shot out longer brings out more flavor interest

* a [light.......dark] slider, which would change a number of parameters for you, which you could see on the chart. You can then tweak the parameters, but this gets you mostly there.
- Lighter roasts extract better hotter, around 94ºC, compared to 88ºC for medium to dark roasts
- A shorter dripping period is appropriate for darker roasts, whereas lighter roasts need more time to bloom
- Lighter roasts will drip more, and that's ok. Also, instead of holding 3 bar during the dripping stage, a declining pressure avoids too much dripping, which is what Rao's Blooming profile does.
- A lower flow rate for darker roasts, faster for lighter roasts
- More in cup for a lighter roast

* I've tinkered with asking the question "Did you pay more than USD$2500 for your grinder?" 😆
- This is an easy way to determine if they have large, flat burrs, or smaller flats burrs (typically 64mm) or conical burrs. Larger burrs=unimodal particle size, vs bimodal (more fines)
- Large burrs tend to have a pressure crash, as the lower amount of fines reduces puck integrity during extraction
- The extraction phase differs depending on whether you have fines or not, with a lower pressure goal being more appropriate with a unimodal grind.

I'd love for all that knowledge to be "invisible" and simply help you along with getting the optimal recipe. Damian's D-Flow profile is a big step toward that goal.

-john

Damian explaining D-Flow for ~30 minutes in today's zoom call.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ib63xBNrzw

Multicolor, multilayer wood handles

Our wood handle manufacturer knows that we're looking for fancier wood for the Decent. The problem we've encountered is that the really beautiful stuff is handcraft-artisan-only, and never available in the kinds of quantities we need.

We do promote the artisan woodworkers who make these beautiful handles in our online community and manual, and these folks do great work. However, none of them want to make 5000 handles for me. :-O They typically can handle <har har> a few dozen orders a year.

A few weeks ago, they told us that a new kind of wood was available, really it's a kind of plywood (multiple layers glued together). We ordered some samples wood Decent handles made in 2 conservative choices, and 2 in crazy-colors.

Personally, I preferred the two woods that were not colored, and left either as light or dark wood. On the top left you can see one that is 50/50 light/dark wood, and to the right of it, once that is mostly light wood (80/20)

The feel of these handles is great. Really smooth, nicely finished. And because they're not "painted" after shaping, they should last well. And the wood is widely available, so we really could mass manufacture these.

But now, I'm curious to hear what you think ... !

Beanconquerer progress

Lars is making good progress in adding scale features to his free Beanconquerer https://beanconqueror.com/ app for Android & iOS. He gave me a version today with a nicely working flowmeter, which now has Excel exporting.

Impressively, it has some "dampening" logic in it, that actually works, as he asked me to lift the cup and swirl, like with a v60, which I did. The flow meter correctly ignored the lifting and weight shock of the returned cup. A little blip at 22s is all I saw from the swirling water motion I'd set up.

This was a test with the DE1, which fed 0.8ml/s for 10 seconds, then a 20s pause, then 1.6ml/s for 10s.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5bdAYWmB7_E


RIP - Decent Tamping Kit 2016-2021

When Bugs & I moved to Hong Kong to set up Decent Espresso, with the intent of building espresso machines we knew nothing about manufacturing. Really, nothing. So... I started by designing coffee accessories and thereby getting an education.

While a few of my coffee accessories have been somewhat successful, the Tamping Kit was a dismal failure. I sure learned a lot! The biggest lessons were:

1) just because something costs a lot to manufacture, doesn't mean that your public will value it. In general, while people say they like nice packaging, they don't want to pay for what it really costs.

2) it's really difficult to assemble something that comes together from many different suppliers. The Tamping Kit was frequently unshippable, due to one accessory being out of stock. Each accessory came from a different supplier, and because we were a small company, our lead times were long, and our inventory easily depleted, as we only had money for a maximum of 6 months of stock.

3) selling a bundle to a public who likely already own some of the items, is well-nigh impossible. Nobody wants to buy duplicates

4) don't stamp the name of your specific product on the expensive packaging! If the suitcase had just said "Decent" on it, we could have re-used the suitcase for other products, but because it said "Tamping Kit" it was doomed to be used only for a glacially-slow selling product.

5) if you assemble a bundle of separate products into one, make sure you sell the bundle quickly. Otherwise, parts of the bundle will obsolete, and then nobody will want the bundle of not-current-generation parts. I made 4 major revisions of the tamper during these 5 years, causing chaos.

6) the "Barista Kit" was less of a failure, because it offered greater value (more stuff in the suitcase) but was still plagued by "cannot ship" through perhaps a third of its 4 years of life.

7) Rather humorously, there are company out there that directly copy whatever Decent does, and several are now offering "Barista Kit" bundles (even the same name) in fancy packaging, such as https://www.amazon.com/Motta-7580-Barista-Kit-Black/dp/B01GRPC09A/ - and perhaps they'll read this text, and realize that imitating is only a good strategy is the person you're following knows where they're going. :-D

In the end, it tooks us 5 years to sell out the (only) 500 Tamping Kit suitcase we had made. The suitcase design and mould costs...never recovered. We steeply discounted these (at the end, 50% off) to finally kill this off.

To celebrate the last ones shipping, we decided to hold a "wake" with a Tamping-Kit shaped cake, so that .... it could leave us with a good taste in our mouth!

But, boy, in another sense "mission accomplished" ! We learned so much about manufacturing this dud product, so in that sense, "failure" has been a success.

-john