Here at Artisti Coffee Roasters we have been using the OCD coffee distribution tool for about 6 months now. How we originally thought this would work and fit into our workflow turned out to be quite different to reality. In this video as Joel describes, its not the silver bullet that's going to fix poor extractions and inconsistencies in your coffee. Joel discusses his thoughts and findings and towards the end of the video shows how we find it works best for us here in our espresso bar.
Unedited Video Transcript
hey this Jeol here at artisti coffee
roasters and today we're going to be
talking about the OCD specifically the
OCD - I'm going to give you a few of my
thoughts and a little bit of a review on
it so the OCD has been around for a few
years now this is the second iteration
of the OCD the OCD - as a basic concept
the idea is that it redistributes coffee
evenly around your basket the way that
is doing that is with this full thin
design it has adjustable depth and all
you're doing is putting it on top of
your coffee basket and spinning it three
times now what I will say is we've had
one of these in our espresso bar behind
me and we've used it day in day out for
the past six months and to be honest
with you it wasn't really what I thought
it was going to be now we know puck sort
of defects are caused by poor
distribution in a fast workflow
environment everyone's looking for that
solution it's gonna get consistent
extractions every single time when we
originally got this into our espresso
bar it was my understanding and this was
going to fix all these problems and be
an absolute time-saver Silver Bullet
don't ever have to worry about a poor
extraction again because we've got the
OCD backing us up as it turns out
surprisingly or not so much that doesn't
seem to be the case at all the OCD
although it's I believe a great product
and can really increase the quality of
the coffee that you're serving in your
espresso bar cafe or even at home it's
not really a time-saving option after
doing my due diligence and research and
a few tests myself there's still a fair
bit of work that you need to do to
prepare your coffee bed before using the
OCD this is purely just a polishing tool
and a finishing tool so rather than just
driving into a large pile in your basket
sticking the OCD on top and spinning it
and not worrying about it there still is
a lot of
then you'll prep as we used to do before
we had the OCD still distributing the
coffee relatively easily evenly around
your basket is a big must before using
the OCD the other thing that I really
sort of found after I suppose a bit of
testing in our bar myself was that the
depth is super critical and important
when we first got this we just for
whatever reason had the tendency to wind
it down quite deep we felt that this was
moving more of the coffee around the
basket where an actual fact all it was
doing was compressing the coffee bed or
you know tamping it and then we put it
into the pot press or manually tamp it
in another way and you double tamping
your coffee and not really distributing
it at all so that was an interesting
find it's also the dose that you're
putting in your basket the the inventor
of this Sascha Cystic actually only
recommends that you're using 21 grams of
coffee in your 21 gram basket now our
standard recipe size is actually 20 2.5
grams so it's more weight and more
volume of coffee than what he recommends
so we're on a very very shallow setting
and still getting that sort of pre tamp
a little bit but circling back I suppose
the real question that most of you guys
need to us that you may not be asking is
is this gonna fix all my problems I can
tell you now it's not this this is a
very very specific finishing tool to
increase the quality of coffee that
you're doing and making you spend more
time in production of that coffee in
that workflow rather than less so that's
the big takeaway that I want you to get
from this video is that this is not
necessarily in my opinion a time-saving
skill or a silver bullet that's gonna
fix your pot defects it's something to
add and spend more time in making that
coffee
process so as I said I still think it's
a great product but not for what I
originally thought it was going to be so
I just want to show you behind the
coffee machine I suppose how not to use
the OCD and then hopefully how we use
the OCD and how I've found that we we
can get really good results using this
tool here so first of all this is how I
would recommend to not use the OCD
[Applause]
so you can see here we've ground
straight into the handle and we've got a
large big lump of coffee in the center
of our basket if I go straight over and
put the OCD on top of that in the center
here all I'm going to do is put pressure
as I lower the OCD in on the center of
that huge mound there and compress the
huge mound so again let's see how this
goes and by spinning it as well I
haven't actually distributed the coffee
that was piled in the center to the
outside all I've done is moved the
coffee that was around the outside of
the basket around that does help but you
can see hopefully you can see that you
can see these large gaps here that we've
got in the side and then if we fuel our
puck it's quite soft on the outside and
quite hard in the center once we
introduce water this bed of coffee we're
going to get heap of channeling around
the outside and under extract the coffee
in me on the inside of the basket I
actually did that at its lowest setting
if you increase the height with all the
depth that the OCD is going into the
basket that's only going to accentuate
the tamping and the solidness of the
center of that puck while not
distributing coffee evenly around the
outside either this is how I thought
that it might work you know and if it
did that's great that I could see how
that could really speed up production
and give a really consistent cup
unfortunately it hasn't so I'm going to
go through how we're actually using the
OCD now and the time and the care that
we that we put into every single
extraction we do to get a really
consistent pure great result
so as you may have seen in our other
videos we're using a dosing pot we're
weighing out all of our doses depending
on what that may be it's precise each
time the next thing that I'm actually
doing is when I flip it upside down I'm
giving it a good shake around and you
can see compared to grinding in the
basket how much better the distribution
on that is we haven't found that in
itself to be enough to then go straight
to the OECD we're still actually
redistributing that coffee around the
basket so it's even what I don't want to
see is a big pile of coffee in the
center I'm not super super worried about
these gaps around the outside I just
don't want to see that huge mound of
coffee in the center that's going to be
compressed so now when I put the OCD on
give it a good spin you can see that
that is actually far more uniform far
more uniform than the last puck that I
have there's no gaps around the edges
there's a little bit of a I suppose a
scrape on the inside of the puck I'm not
super worried about that and when I go
and I feel my puck it's nice and
consistent the whole way through from
there we're just going to use a puck
press or manually turn and go through
we've found really great results
to kind of add to that extra little bit
of care it's not going to save you time
it's not going to necessarily make your
life easy but it is definitely going to
up the quality of your end product
thanks for joining us today guys if you
have had an experience with the OCD why
don't you tell us about it below in the
comments whether that be good bad or
otherwise we'd love to hear how you're
using the OCD and what your thoughts
were on that thanks for watching we hope
to catch you next time
