Before you leave, you notice a sad row of thermal coffee pots. They sit alone and weary, possibly all day long, with no indication of when they were brewed. Decent coffee shops will tell you how old the brewed coffee sitting there is, either with a digital readout or a number written in dry erase marker on the tag. This is something that a lot of even mediocre coffeeshops have caught on to, and it's currently a basic expectation that your coffee should be kept in a thermal carafe and be no more than an hour or two old. Really good coffee shops might have these thermal carafes for folks in a rush, but they will also offer hand drip, french press, or Clover coffee made to order, which is really what you should be getting anyway if you're going to spend two bucks on a cup o' joe.
So you walk past the crowded hipster swillhole and see the next coffeeshop, the ':yadda yadda: coffeeshop'. You look in the window and see a semi-automatic machine. 'Hallelujah!', you think to yourself. Your self agrees. You begin to walk into :yadda yadda: and a disturbing, sickening sight accosts you like a mugger in a dark alley. The portafilters are sitting upside-down on top of the espresso machine! THE PORTAFILTERS SHOULD NEVER BE THERE! EVER! EVER! I had someone explain to me once why they put their portafilters on top of the machine. They were wrong, and that's why their espresso was awful. Portafilters need to be hot, and they need to be very hot. A portafilter should be essentially at the temperature of extraction, and one rinse is not going to be enough to warm them up. The warming tray on top of the espresso machine is made to keep cups warm, not hot. Espresso machines are designed to let the portafilter stay warmed up and ready to go attached to the machine.You take another look around, largely to allow me, the author of your fate, to provide the reader with more warning signs. The drink menu above the counter is full of sugar-bomb mocha hazelnut chai watermelon lattes and the like. There are two potential reasons for this in a coffeeshop: A) The coffeeshop is trying to reach a coffee-illiterate demographic in a small town or tough market. B) The coffeeshop is hiding something, probably the sub-par quality of its espresso. Since there is a legitimate reason for some places to have a menu like this, let's keep looking around. What kind of beans are they using? Run for the hills if they 'proudly' serve any of the following: S***bucks, Green Mountain, Illy, Lavazza. You may think to yourself, "Hey, Illy and Lavazza are Italian. Aren't they quality espresso?" The answer is a resounding NO. Illy and Lavazza are both dedicated to cutting costs, buying the cheapest beans around, and exporting a roast that attempts to not offend either the Northern Italian or Southern Italian palate, thereby offending both equally.
You stay a bit longer to watch the barista. She surlily takes orders from the uninformed masses (NOTE: this doesn't affect the coffee quality. In fact, many of the best baristas are actually really horrible people) and walks over to the grinder. She picks up the wretched portafilter and doses (pulls the little lever on the side of the grinder) WITHOUT grinding. A good barista will grind only enough to fill the portafilter. If the barista doesn't grind at all, or grinds far too much and just lets the rest of the coffee sit there, it's a VERY bad thing. The flavor of ground coffee begins to deteriorate almost immediately (this is why you absolutely need a coffee grinder at home), and coffee ground for espresso will not be good after a few minutes. She then uses a little plastic insert mounted on the grinder to tamp the coffee. This is a slap in your face. The barista should be tamping all shots by hand by placing the portafilter on the counter, and then tamping lightly , tapping the portafilter lightly with the tamper, then tamping again with 30 pounds of pressure, and finally polishing the tamped coffee by spinning the tamper. Variations of this method do exist and are a-ok, but the important thing is that they tamp with a handheld tamper. She then places the portafilter on the espresso machine, hits a button, and the shot pulls… in 10 seconds. The ideal time for a shot to pull is 25 seconds. If a barista serves a shot that pulls in less than 22 seconds, it's unprofessional (though a good barista might still use 22-28 second shots for lattes, especially flavored lattes). But if they serve a shot that pulls in less than 20 seconds, it's a problem. They don't know what they're doing, or they just don't care about you. A good barista will drop a bad shot and pull another. Quick shots taste thin and bitter. The crema is key. If it looks pale, it's not good (remember our discussion of crema on a chemex last week? Same thing). The crema should be predominantly reddish brown with some slight variation being ok. If it's not there at all when you get your espresso, you just got ripped off. Long shots are bad though not as horrible, and they will certainly not be used by a good barista.
As the terrible barista pulls her terrible shots, she reaches into a terrible refrigerator and pulls out a terrible metal pitcher. If the pitcher has ANY milk in it or if it looks unclean, it's a very bad sign for your latte. I stress this highly. Any decent barista at any decent coffeeshop will steam only enough milk for one drink at a time and will rinse the pitcher after every use. A bad barista will re-use or 're-steam' their milk. Re-steaming will never result in a good latte. Your bad barista then froths your milk by making a lot of terrible gurgling and sputtering noises, then sits the milk under the running steam wand and walks away from it. Proper treatment of milk will be an article unto itself on this site, but one thing is certain: if they walk away from your pitcher of milk, they aren't giving it the attention it deserves. Good milk will be steamed/frothed to a temperature of 150-164 degrees Fahrenheit (150 is where lactose begins to be at its most perceptible sweetness and 164 is where milk proteins begin to break down), and if the barista isn't looking, they're going to miss this narrow range. It will also contain virtually no visibly perceptible bubbles, often called 'grain' in the business. A good barista will tap and swirl the pitcher a few times after steaming to remove all visible grain, and an absolutely stellar barista won't have to because they managed to break up the grain while steaming. Watch out though; a bad barista won't tap or swirl either. The bad barista who made all those sputtering and gurgling noises was making what we in the know refer to as 'sea foam', and it's another thing that characterizes S***bucks.
You walk out in absolute disgust, cursing your very existence in a town/universe with such terrible coffeeshops. But then you see it, glistening in the distance like an oasis in the desert: 'Pretentious Snob Coffee House'. It's patrons smile back at you with their well-formed drinks. You walk in the door and see a clean, shiny espresso machine on the counter. It has a name like La Marzocco, Astoria, or even Nuovo Simonelli. You walk up to the counter and see the menu: "Espresso, Macchiato, Cappuccino, Latte, Americano, Hand drip coffee" plus or minus some tea/hot chocolate options that no one reads. The barista surlily takes orders, this time with an air of superiority. It's ok. You're not here to see a smiling face. She walks to the grinder, removes the portafilter from the espresso machine, maybe giving it a quick wipedown. The grinder whirs for a few seconds, then ceases. Tamp. Tap. Tamp. Twirl. She lets the water run for a split second before replacing the portafilter. The shot is too fast. She dumps it, and does the whole process over again. A perfect 25 second shot pours into the cup (even if the first shot was perfect, she might taste to make sure, then pull another to serve).
You stand face to face with her.
"One tall latte please."
"Dude," She replies. "Just say small."
She warms up a ceramic cup with water from the espresso machine, pulls your perfect shot, grabs a clean metal pitcher, pours in a specific amount of fresh whole milk (she won't even ask), and gives the steam wand a quick flush. You hear a light hissing sound for a few seconds, then a quieter, deeper noise as the whole pitcher of milk is coaxed into a vortex (and she finishes all of this by the time the shots are done). The noise stops, the shots are pulled, she taps the pitcher lightly and gives it a brief swirl, but it's not even necessary. She pours the steamed milk into the latte (she would die before putting a spoon in that pitcher), sinking the light steamed milk below the crema at first, then pouring it delicately and deliberately into a rosetta, a beautiful symbol of the effort that went into creating your perfect latte. You pay (wow, it's cheaper than S***bucks!), and take the first sip. The steamed milk tastes light and sweet, a subtle sweetness from the milk itself. The espresso gives it a wonderful brightness and aroma that brings a smile to your face. You walk away with the aforementioned stupid grin on your face. The next customer walks up."One grande caramel mocha please."
"I hate all these people," your barista muses.
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