Batch Brews Baby!

Waiting in line sucks. Especially when you are waiting for your first coffee of the day. What if there was a better way? There is! It’s called batch brew. Fast filter, batchy, epic coffee, whatever you call it, there is no denying how a well placed vacpot full of fresh hot filter coffee on your bar can speed up your service wait times.

What is batch brew? It’s filter coffee brewed en masse and stored in a thermos to keep it piping hot and ready to rock. Best drunk black, it is clean, sweet and smashable. Batch brews are a great way to showcase how delicious different origins of coffee can be. Unfortunately filter coffee has copped a bit of a bad rep in Australia, we tend to think all drip is like ‘that coffee they drink in america’ weak, bitter and often roasty, sitting in the clear glass jug on a hot plate stewing. However the tide is turning, good quality green coffee, roasted to highlight its natural sugars and acids help to bring out the complexity of flavour that coffee has. Fruity, nutty, sweet, bright, juicy, vibrant are all descriptors of good quality batch brewing, and often people who try a quality filter for the first time are taken by surprise at the flavours and sweetness.

Serving great batch brew is relatively easy to master, firstly make sure you have a quality thermos that keeps your batch piping hot, if it goes tepid in under an hour it’s no good. Put your thermos front and centre, next to the till is great, or somewhere where customers can help themselves or you can serve their cup as they order, fast filter! Set yourself up for success, if your brewer isn’t plumbed then have two or three 1L glass bottles handy filled with your brewing water so you are ready to refill your brewer as soon as it finishes brewing. Pre dose your coffee into tins and keep them handy, so grinding up a fresh brew is as quick as possible, and always have at least two thermoses, that way you can start brewing a fresh batch as your previous one gets low, that way you never run out.

It’s important that your staff are trained and informed on what they are serving, the key to growing batch brew sales is to engage with your customers as to what it is and its benefits. Has a regular recently switched to soy? Probably because they’re trying to get off dairy, sling them some batch to try, tell them it’s faster, cheaper and healthier and chances are you’ve just converted them into a filter fan. Try running a discount batch day, or bottomless cup option, the more people you can get to try batch the more likely you are to convert them into regular filter coffee drinkers.

Gross margins on filter brews are attractive too, for example if you spend $42 for a kilo of high quality single origin filter coffee, and brew 60g/1L batches then your kilo will yield you somewhere around 15-16 one litre batches. Each batch will cost roughly $2.60 and yield around 4-6 regular cups depending on your cup size. This will result in a gross margin of up to 50%, and at a fraction of the labour required to brew espresso drinks.

Keep it fresh, make it fast, and talk to your customers about all the awesome benefits of drinking batch and you should see your sales grow! If you want to know more or how to get the most out of your batch brewer please get in touch, we LOVE filter coffee. Happy brewing!