"Here kitty kitty!"

I work for a company that among other things is a large coffee roaster and supplier. I've been fortunate enough to sit in on some 'Barista' training courses as well as practice on a cafe style espresso machine in our office. The downside is that I'm a little spoiled when it comes to coffee and I tend to find it difficult to find a 'quality' coffee.

A few tips I've learned along the way for finding good quality coffee:

- Check out the person making the coffee. If the cafe is more food oriented and there's a regular rotation of waiter/waitresses making the coffees it probably won't be good. In contrast, if the cafe does a thriving coffee business and there appears to be one person making the coffee, hopefully its a trained barista and the coffee should be good.
- The espresso machine should be clean and look maintained. In particular, the milk wand should not be caked in dried milk.
- The grinder reservoir should not be filled to the brim and the beans shouldn't be pre-ground to speed up proceedings. Coffee beans go stale very quickly. The reservoir should be partially filled and the coffee should be freshly ground just prior to each coffee being made.
- The barista should 'flush', or quickly run a second or two of water through the machine and handle before tamping the fresh coffee. This removes the stale leftovers from the previous coffee.
- From start to finish, the 30ml espresso shot should take approximately 20-25 seconds. If they extract the coffee for longer you'll get a nasty bitter aftertaste. If the coffee is pouring quickly and only running for 15 seconds you're not getting a full bodied taste. You're also not getting the caffeine hit as this occurs in the final part of the extraction.
- Also note, for a 'large' coffee the barista should pour a double shot of espresso, NOT run the extraction for twice as long. This results in the most horrible, bitter tasting, caffeine loaded coffee you can imagine. You'd be surprised how many cafe and larger chains do this.
- When frothing the milk, the barista should have their hand under the jug to judge the correct temperature. The milk shouldn't be over heated and should be hot enough to drink straight away without burning your tongue. It should also look 'creamy', not bubbly like a milk-shake.
- The final coffee should taste sweet enough that you don't actually need sugar. This is a habit most of us develop from drinking instant coffee. It definitely should not have a bitter aftertaste but should taste a little sweet and slight chocolate flavour.

And one last little tidbit of trivia. The most expensive coffee in the world is picked from the droppings of the 'Civet', which looks a little like a cat. Believe it or not!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kopi_Luwak



FG