Clover is at Cartel Coffee Lab

***STRAW GOSSIP***

A couple months ago, huymans wrote about the clover and the other day I was in a cafe in Tempe, called Cartel Coffee Lab, where I spotted a clover. I didn’t get to try it, so I can’t review it at this time, but I figured I’d put it on the radar. If you’re in the area, go give it a try — Cartel is located at 225 W. University Dr. Tempe AZ 85281 Suite # 101. They aren’t open early in the morning, which is a little bit of a problem for those commuting into work, but their hours are: M-Sat, 8AM-6PM. I’ll turn this into a review when I do get to try the clover.

What’s next for Clover?

Perhaps the best first post for Coffee Straws is one that deals with the culture of coffee. As such I would like to discuss some recent developments with the Clover Machine. Back before this blog existed I wrote a post for the now deceased Literature’s Next Frontier that responded to a New York Times article detailing the Clover Machine and one other from Japan that was nearly double the price. Now without the price being disclosed here, a doubling might not sound like so much but here is the kicker… the Clover costs around $11,000 meaning the Japanese version, the Siphon Machine costs around $20,000. So what we are dealing with here are coffee makers that rival new cars.

The reason I bring the Clover Machine up now is that a few weeks back it announced its merger with (or rather its take over by) the Starbucks Coffee Company. The announcement on their website suggests that with Starbucks the original idea of the Clover Machine can be brought to a larger audience. The Clover inspires the idea of coffee as an eloquent drink once again. In its precision and style, the machine manages to produces a near perfect (only because perfection is arguably impossible) cup of coffee that should never be consumed with the aid of milk and sugar. This rediscovery of coffee as an eloquent drink helps elevate it to the level of the now extremely popular espresso drinks. But will that elevation continue under the guidance of Starbucks?

Starbucks in it of itself deserves a whole section of posts as it at best has extremely mixed and polarizing reviews from the coffee community. There are those that swear by the taste and culture of Starbucks and there are those who believe it has destroyed cafe culture. It is obvious to see what these two camps will conclude when looking at the Clover, but what about the coffee culture at large? Will we benefit from Starbucks’s takeover? With such a financial powerhouse behind the manufacturing of the machine, its technology can be mainstreamed and thus made cheaper for a broader market, but at the same time the essential elements of the machine might be lost in this mainstreaming and the coffee produced may not fit the same bill.

So we are left with the question: Cheaper and more accessible or expensive and sophisticated? Now that is one problem, a second and arguably more important problem is the loss of aura when the small company Clover becomes part of the Starbucks empire.

Thus let us engage the question: What is next for Clover?