AlexKilpatrick Senior Member Joined: 30 Jan 2013 Posts: 117 Location: Austin
Espresso: Breville Dual Boiler Grinder: Bairtiza Vario
Posted Tue Feb 5, 2013, 10:07pm Subject: Re: I made POV video making espresso based drinks at my work.
That was really fascinating. Thanks so much for posting this. A few comments/questions:
1) Good Lord, man. You need a helper! You must just collapse when you get home at night. 2) It looks like your tamping is just a formality. What do you think of all the geek tamping rituals? 3) What camera did you use? 4) People put sugar in a latte? <shudder>
Posted Tue Feb 5, 2013, 10:53pm Subject: Re: I made POV video making espresso based drinks at my work.
I don't mean to be rude, but I disagreed with almost everything in this video, and you DID say that feedback was welcome. I don't mean to offend, and I hope you don't take it too hard. But your shots were gushers and really overextracted. You were pulling WAY too much volume. What coffee are you using? You should NEVER re-steam milk, and you NEVER use dirty, just-used milk pitchers. Your milk shouldn't be hot enough to burn you, it gets scalded much above 145. You certainly shouldn't be able to put it in the refrigerator for a minute and still serve a hot drink. The milk should be poured immediately so that you have a good, consistent texture and so it doesn't separate on you.
AlexKilpatrick Senior Member Joined: 30 Jan 2013 Posts: 117 Location: Austin
Espresso: Breville Dual Boiler Grinder: Bairtiza Vario
Posted Wed Feb 6, 2013, 8:42am Subject: Re: I made POV video making espresso based drinks at my work.
To me it seemed like he was just making compromises to handle the number of people he had to service. As far as I know, none of the things you are critiquing are unhygienic, they just make sub-optimal coffee. And if you can service more people (who probably won't notice), is that such a bad thing? In any market there are niches - you can be the elite coffee place, or you can be Starbucks, or you can be Joe's Cheap Coffee House.
I would really be interested in seeing if someone can tell the difference between freshly steamed and recently re-steamed milk in a latte.
Posted Wed Feb 6, 2013, 1:24pm Subject: Re: I made POV video making espresso based drinks at my work.
AlexKilpatrick Said:
To me it seemed like he was just making compromises to handle the number of people he had to service. As far as I know, none of the things you are critiquing are unhygienic, they just make sub-optimal coffee. And if you can service more people (who probably won't notice), is that such a bad thing? In any market there are niches - you can be the elite coffee place, or you can be Starbucks, or you can be Joe's Cheap Coffee House.
I would really be interested in seeing if someone can tell the difference between freshly steamed and recently re-steamed milk in a latte.
I completely disagree. Serving subpar product because you assume they won't notice doesn't excuse the subpar product. The workload he was handling (a person every few minutes ordering 1 drink), is not volume by any stretch of the imagination. He has the time to take 5 seconds to pour fresh milk. Pulling a gusher shot didn't save him any time considering he pulled it in the range that one would if it were a well-pulled shot. Oversteaming milk and then refrigerating it not only takes MORE time, but I have no idea why ANYONE would suggest that. He's not compromising to save time; he's just compromising. I wasn't assuming that he knew better and chose to ignore these facts to serve more customers, I was assuming he didn't know better. Hence my hope that he wouldn't be offended. Now, if he does know better and still chooses to serve his drinks that way, then I would take back my comments about not meaning offense.
Even SBUX trains their staff not to resteam milk. They have no problem scalding their milk and using every other method of basically offering a less than mediocre product, so what does that tell you about resteaming milk? I don't think anyone who has experience with well-prepared milk-based espresso drinks would have any issue distinguishing the two.
I completely agree that there are different demographics and niches, but he posted this here. This demographic reaches for excellence, not compromise. A heavy workload doesn't necessitate compromise, I have seen that first hand.
Posted Sun Feb 10, 2013, 12:29pm Subject: Re: I made POV video making espresso based drinks at my work.
Wow man you are a ninja when it comes to multi tasking! Suggestions IMO are the following. I would have some of your cups close to the machine for easy grab and brew so you don't gotta twirl around all the time. I would not re steam milk because your just burning almost burned milk once it's cooled. Your also gonna lose texture when you make the second drink and the milk will have no sweetness left in it. As for the shots I would take your time tamping and timing the brew with a $10 timer foreach group. I bet if you time making 2 drinks your current way and 2 drinks taking your time you will notice there isnt much of a time diffrence. Hope this helps. :)
Great customer service man!
PS: If your making a lot of milk based drinks I would look into a cold dispencer or pour milk into larger thermoses to keep it cool. They are cheap.
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