Barista Institute Tests: The Goat Story Gina
Goat Gina is something that many of you probably have came across in social media or at least I have. I really liked to multi functionality of Gina and the design is also pretty amazing. The manufacturer has done quite nice marketing and I just had to order one of these babies for us to try out. So let’s begin the testing.
First of the principle of Gina is that it combines three different methods of brewing: immersion, infusion and cold drip. The brew process is guided by an app, which walks you through the whole thing. Once you have found a brew you like, you can save it to the app and repeat it later on. The app also lets you share your recipe or borrow the recipes of other Gina users.
The looks
Gina sure looks nice and I think it intuitively welcomes the user to brew witch I believe is a sign of great design. The Slovenian coffee gadget company actually won a Reddot design award for Gina last year. Gina consist of six parts; a glass pitcher, a frame with scale in it, a lid, a fennel, a cold drip module and a cold drip filter. All the parts look and feel super high quality and manufacturer suggest to clean them by hand.
Usability
Gina works together with a Bluetooth application and before brewing user need to connect their device to the phone app. At least for me it worked really easily as Gina uses location info to find the right device with the Bluetooth. The app is quite crucial as the scale is interlaced into the brewer itself and from the phone or other device user follows the instructions and operates the scale. As I have used quite many different coffee brewers Gina seemed like super easy to use. But when I asked my husband to try it out things didn't work quite so smoothly. He felt that without watching the instruction videos (that the app does offer when you first turn it on) it was quite tricky to use Gina. Especially the cold drip was doomed to end up into a disaster at the first try. But after few tries Gina worked really nicely and was surprisingly fast.
The only few problems I found out was that the valve heats up (especially when making a immersion brew) making it unpleasant to use it. Also I had the valve clocked few times when making a pour over resulting very long brew time and over extracted coffee. This maybe due to the filter paper that came with Gina as they are quite thick or the funnel not being perfectly in right place in valve.
Scale
The scale is surprisingly accurate as the user can choose up to 0,1 g for the brewing. At first try I was taring it wrong resulting errors, but when I got hang of it the scale seems to work perfectly.
The app
The app offers three features for brewing; cold drip, immersion and infusion. You can also collect your favorite recipes, follow previous brews, share with friends or community. I feel it really works nicely and is super smooth to use.
These is how the app works:
- Connect your device to Gina
- Select a brewing method
- Select a brewing ratio, the app will tell the amount water you need for brewing
- Follow the brewing instructions
- Get data about your coffee and give scoring for your coffee (bitterness, body, aftertaste, acidity, overall rating)
- Browse around brewing tips of your own community
I liked using Gina as the brewer and the app sync really smoothly. I can highly recommend Gina for any coffee lover who wants to change the brewing method frequently as Gina has so many ways to experiment. Plus if the user is looking for a coffee community Gina offers nice possibility share ideas and recipes. For those who are completely new to manual brewing there are few difficulties as Gina doesn’t help when measuring water temperature or grind size. But I don't see that as huge problem when learning the basics. The gadget is rather large and takes quite a lot of space but it's also beautiful so I don't mind having on my kitchen counter all the time, but for those who love minimalistic brewing stations it might be little too much.
