5 Ways to maximize your beverage equipment

Sponsored by Fetco

No one has an infinite amount of counter space, but your customers continue to increase the beverage offerings they want. What can you do? Use your coffee and tea equipment to its fullest potential by brewing a variety of beverages, hot and cold, throughout the year on the equipment you already have. Understanding your equipment’s capabilities will allow you to not only add more beverages, but you can also maximize resources by creating efficiencies. It is as easy as this – Your Coffee Equipment dispenses hot water for coffee, but that hot water can also be used to brew hot tea. By using dedicated dispensers for coffee and tea, you can add more beverages to your line up. Your Iced tea brewer initially dispenses hot water over the tea so this machine is also capable of brew hot coffee. Since Iced Tea machines also dispense ambient temperature water to the hot tea concentrate to create the iced tea beverage, you can also use an iced tea machine for iced coffee. Just make sure to use separate dispensers and brew baskets for tea and for coffee so that there isn’t a taste transfer.

Here are more beverages you can create using your coffee and tea machines:

Coffee Equipment: Brew Iced Coffee and Hot Tea using your hot coffee brewing equipment

Iced Coffee: Use the Japanese Iced Coffee Method to brew iced coffee by replacing half the water with ice. Brewing hot coffee over ice flash cools the coffee, locking in flavors  and volatile aromatics.

Step 1: Fill coffee dispenser with ice and place under the coffee brewer  

Step 2: Place the amount of ground coffee in the brew basket to brew the batch size desired

Step 3: Brew using half the amount of water. Ex. If you wish to brew 1.0 gallon of Iced Coffee, use the amount of ground coffee you normally use for a 1.0 recipe, but press the .5 gallon button on the coffee machine.

Step 4: Serve over ice and enjoy 

 

Hot Tea: Use a tea infuser to brew hot tea on a coffee machine

Step 1: Fill infuser with loose tea leaves

Step 2: Place filled infuser in the dispenser by removing the Fresh Timer  and Volume Indicator. Note: Use a dedicated dispenser for tea only to prevent cross  contamination and flavor transfer to dispensers used for coffee.

Step 3: Brew hot water directly into the dispenser over the loose leaf tea and steep

Step 4: Serve and enjoy

Tea Equipment: Use tea equipment to perform double (or triple) duty to make  Sweet Tea and Cold Brew Coffee/Tea 

Sweet Tea: Make any tea brewer a sweet tea brewer by manually adding the  sweetener of your choice during the dilution delay (time between brewing the  concentrate and the addition of the dilution water). Make sure to stir thoroughly  to completely dissolve the simple syrup.

Cold Brew Coffee and Tea: If your tea brewer can deliver 100% dilution water  (ambient temperature water, not hot water), use it to create a cold brew coffee  or tea. FETCO’s TBS-V tea brewer can be programmed for 100% dilution.  

Step 1: Place either a Brewista Basket with pods or a Toddy Filter with ground  coffee or loose leaf tea inside a 3.5 or 5.0 gallon iced coffee/iced tea dispenser.

Step 2: Press the button programmed for 100% dilution water to deliver the desired  amount of water

Step 3: Steep according to your recipe

Step 4: Remove the ground coffee, pods or loose leaf tea

Step 5: Add water to the concentrate by using the programmed 100% dilution button

Step 6: Serve over ice and enjoy

 

Frozen Beverage Equipment: Use your frozen beverage machine to create handcrafted cold and frozen drinks.
31% of Millennials and Gen Z 31% more likely to add a flavor shot (Restaurant Business, Beverage Trends Report, 6 Trends Shaking Up Business Sales, Patricia Cobe, 2016). Create a neutral slushie base (sugar and water) and encourage guests to create their own custom flavor by adding flavor shots. Layering colors and flavors allows Millennials and Gen Zers to create interesting taste fusions. When handcrafting frozen beverages, it is important to check the sugar content prior to adding the mixture to the hopper to ensure it freezes properly. Refer to the service manual for sugar content guidelines.