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When I worked at starbucks, the nickname for their "french roast" was "french gross". Which I felt was apt. Though I had to say, after I started learning more about coffee, the training about smelling/tasting nuances helped me find them in good, well roasted coffee. They had these weird smelly bottles that isolated a lot of scents.
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Mar 22, 2012 17:37
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| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 17:34 |
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I got the training through starbucks. I took the knowledge and went and learnt a bunch on my own. I don't really know how much was starbucks and how much was me. It was part of getting your barista certification, and my manager actually got every one to go through it. When my friend worked at starbucks (same location, different manager) she didn't have to do the coffee passport thing at all, or the smelly bottles. She was also the type to avoid stuff like that. I did it mostly so I could go in the back and drink a cup of coffee and have it not be considered a break.
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Mar 22, 2012 18:46
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If you don't mind low quality foam, you can buy a small french press and froth it that way. It's a dry foam, but it's still foam. I can't think of a way to get wet foam without a steam wand. EDIT: Not sure if every starbucks does the training or not, plus I worked there ... 4? 5? years ago. It might not be something they do anymore.
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Mar 22, 2012 19:57
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Two questions: 1) What's the best method to make coffee with an espresso pot? I have a plain stainless steel espresso pot, not a moka pot with the pressure thingy. 2) Green coffee beans last for ~year, right? I can't remember how old my green coffee are right now, but I have about a pound, or maybe two. I want to roast them now that the weather is nicer and I can open all the windows in my apartment without freezing to death.  Also I successfully got my boyfriend using a french press instead of instant coffee. Finally!
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Mar 31, 2012 21:56
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Does anyone have a good measure for g/mL of grounds to water for French Press? I've been eyeballing it most of the time (plus I'm not picky) but I'd like to have a jumping off point for measuring my coffee by weight instead of volume.
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Aug 4, 2012 20:12
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Whalley posted:Here's one of the better drinks I poured off my last shift. I've been working on combining tulip and rosetta designs together, but without decent round-bottomed latte mugs it's hard to start the tulip close enough to the back wall to pull off the "phoenix" Latte art was one of my favourite things to do when I worked as a barista, though when the place I was working at changed management I hardly got any time to make drinks. It was always the assistant manager who was allowed to make drinks and we all got poo poo for not practising enough. Blah. I make a lot of failed hearts that turned out to look more like garlic bulbs. Did you draw the body on the phoenix on?
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Sep 21, 2012 22:47
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Then since they generally mask the burnt flavour with sugar, they please the sweet tooths. When I worked at starbucks, someone ordered a large/venti coffee with 1.5x (or possibly 1.75x) the usual amount of dulce de leche syrup... I just don't know how you can drink something like that, and that wasn't particularly abnormal. Even then, when I didn't know what good coffee tasted like. I heard that Starbucks will drive independent coffee shops out of a good location, because they can operate a store on a loss. Though I'm not sure what truth there is to that and I'm not going to dig an article up.
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Oct 15, 2012 22:32
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I know cold brew is the way to go when getting low-acidity coffee brewed, but is there a good way to minimize acidity using hot brew methods? I'm really bad for forgetting things in my fridge.
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Dec 9, 2012 22:32
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I generally have to have ~200mL of water before I have my first coffee. Food or not. Though it feels more that I'm just bad at keeping myself hydrated (or sleeping with my mouth open). Really cold water is the worst first thing in the morning, for me. Though its probably the teeth being angry more than anything.
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Feb 8, 2013 22:38
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Uh, those links are giving a redirect loop. You could probably just get an ok kettle, 2~3 small french press pots (you can get $10 ones at IKEA that work just fine). Alternatively, Cold Brew, but I forget the process. Maybe try to get a press pot for yourself and share it with the other dark coffee person to see what they think? Switch off coffee duties each morning? Usually when I get up to make myself a press pot I start the kettle, prep the press, make my breakfast/do my makeup, pour the kettle, do some other thing, coffee. I also use a moka-pot thing, too, which means I just set it on my stove and go faff around until I hear it finish. My kettle is a piece of poo poo, but since I live at a moderately high elevation I just stop the kettle as soon as I hear it go quiet. Local boiling point of water for me is ~95C, which is in the ideal range, I think. Also I don't always care first thing in the morning.
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Feb 14, 2013 23:23
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Anyone have pictures of how much space their coffee set ups take? I have a tiny kitchen and I'm going to be getting some sort of cart-thing to put my future espresso station on, and just want to know roughly how much space it'll take up. I'm mildly concerned about spills because rental + carpet... but I doubt I'll have much issue because I'm careful enough. Currently I use mostly french press, which takes a minimal amount of space.
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Mar 10, 2013 00:49
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Mordiceius posted:I'm asking this on behalf of my wife, as I don't drink coffee. For my friend who loves starbucks sugarbombs, what I'd make her is this: Stovetop espresso pot, French press for "foaming" milk, simple syrup (usually made from scratch with whatever sugar/flavours I had on hand )You can probably try a Moka Pot, its more expensive than a plain one, but might be "espresso" enough for her. I like them because they're pretty hands off once you figure out what temperature on your stove works the best. Grounds in, screw together, put on stove. Go make/eat breakfast and microwave some sugarmilk, dumb finished moka pot, enjoy. Speaking of SOs with different coffee opinions/tastes, my boyfriend honestly wondered why when I made coffee it always tasted better than when he did. For a while he thought that just whole beans would make it better, but he'd buy the cheapest stuff in bulk and let it go super, super stale. He can taste the difference, but he... just doesn't get how quickly oxygen exposure makes things go stale. Also that if he uses half the stale grounds and brews them twice as long, even if you grind from whole in a french press... you're just going to get black sadness in a cup. (He knows better now)
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Sep 6, 2013 19:46
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Shugojin posted:Oh I taste fruit and floral and stuff, I'm possibly just too lazy to think about hmmmm what kiiind of fruit does it taste like? Same here. I always interpreted notes as "this tangyness reminds me of a lemon, kinda" and less "I actually taste lemon". Steeped in personal interpretation too.
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Oct 16, 2013 22:55
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Wowporn posted:Does anyone have any experience with something like this? It's a portable french press/travel mug that seems perfect for what I need but it's expensive and I can't tell from the amazon page how much of a pain in the rear end it is to clean. I got one for Christmas one year and its not any more difficult to clean than a regular french press. It doesn't work the best because you have the grounds sitting in the bottom for the duration of you drinking the coffee, so it makes the last bit of sludge extra... sludgy.
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May 2, 2014 17:37
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My boyfriend recently discovered that french press coffee ruins his guts, while drip is generall okay. Probably anything with a finer filter than the mesh in a press, and I was wondering what would be the best route to take. I was looking at a CCD and/or Chemex, is there much difference between them? I have a lovely $40 electric burr grinder, so it's still not great, but not the worst. I'll probably grab both, might get a CCD for work, too. I was going to go an start up an espresso set up, but the taste doesn't really offset the cost right now. Plus I don't have much counter space, its a lot easier to put a french press in a cupboard than everything else.
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Jul 23, 2014 02:37
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becoming posted:They are pretty different, yeah. Chemex is a pour-over method, CCD is an immersion method. Chemex has very thick paper filters, which results in a very clean cup. Chemex will also make multiple cups at once, whereas the CCD is really a one-cup-at-a-time brewer. That having been said, for the price of a Chemex, you could buy two CCDs and now you can make two cups at once. Price isn't a huge issue, just don't want to spend more than $150 CDN on something that is too finicky to be worth it. I tend to drink a lot, but at the same time I have no objection to buying multiple CCDs. Mu Zeta posted:The CCD is ugly and feels like cheap plastic junk. The Chemex is heavy and will last a lifetime as long as you don't drop it. Get the Chemex. Good to know that I'll probably get sick of looking a chemex before it'll break, barring gravity. AriTheDog posted:I used a Chemex for years, and at this point I would recommend against the Chemex especially for people just getting into drip coffee. It's the most finicky method I've used, and getting the grind/water temperature just right each time to provide a consistent cup really requires a scale, gooseneck kettle, and some tinkering for each bean you use with it. While it's an attractive object it's no better than a Hario/Melitta pourover when it comes to actually making coffee, and the paper filters Chemex sells are far from flavor and odor-free. Really you should just buy a cheap plastic Melitta pourover and some filters and go from there because it'll cost you next to nothing. Or, if you're interested in espresso and don't want to drop a lot of money you could try the Aeropress which will allow you to make psuedo-espresso drinks. I'll look into the Melitta pourover stuff, too. If Chemex is finicky then my boyfriend won't go for it. I'm leaning away from the Chemex after reading about the filters, I really don't like the taste of paper. I've been looking at the aeropress for a while, too. Just haven't had a chance to go to one of my favourite cafes to pick one up. Maybe I'll look into getting a side table or whatever instead and grabbing a Zojirushi drip brewer or something. I don't mind finicky methods but I usually value sleeping in for a longer amount of time than my boyfriend. Maybe I'll grab a couple of CCDs or equivalent, an aeropress and then go from there. Enjoying good coffee is hard work.
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Jul 24, 2014 01:19
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enojy posted:Agh that looks like a good shot. My only experience with espresso is the few years I did at Starbucks, and I never pulled shots that looked that good. We had some big dick millionaire machines, too. Perhaps it was the quality/freshness of the beans. Were you at a place that had fully automatic machines? Its basically impossible to get anything better than an "okay" shot out of those. I worked at both a starbucks and a local place and I got some really, really good training at the local place at the roaster that they used. I forget which machine it was, but they called it "the slicer" and you could control the pressure/flow with a handle and it made some amazing shots and I drank so much espresso during my training there. I wish I took pictures.
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Aug 24, 2014 01:04
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I worked as a barista briefly during university and after everyone got their espresso/latte art training, there was one girl that took it too far. She was one of those people that couldn't handle anything less than 100% and severely slowed down during the morning rush. She was already the slowest before she started making every failed heart into a bunny.
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May 21, 2015 21:54
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I used to work a place that offered Soy, Almond, Lactose-reduced and rice milk. Soy and Almond foams beautifully compared to rice milk, and the people who ordered it were pretty used to it not being foamy. Smelled nice, though.
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Nov 24, 2015 06:28
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Is there a Clever Coffee Dripper, or equivalent, that's big enough to make about a liter of coffee? I like the idea of a chemex, but I don't want to bother with proprietary filters. The boyfriend has a sensitive stomach and can't take the silty dirtiness of french press anymore, and we don't really want to get anything that takes up a bunch of counter space. All our coffee cups are oddly shaped otherwise I'd just grab a Melitta from Canadian Tire and call it a day.
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May 8, 2017 19:14
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| # ¿ Apr 27, 2024 17:34 |
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I got trained for a barista job I had a while back, and it is a blast to use the $20,000 machines but it's always disappointing to go back to your regular stuff. I used one that let you change the pressure up and down while pulling the shot and it was awesome.
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Jun 23, 2017 21:47
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