Basics: Consistency. Taste everything you produce. Yes it is expensive and time consuming. But it sure beats serving a hot lemon mocha to a regular only to find that the lemon syrup curdles in hot milk. You will find yourself with an empty coffeehouse if you use your customers as guinea pigs. Decide on proportions and stick to them. Always measure. Use thermometers for milk. Use spoons, measuring cups, whatever utensil necessary to insure that proportions are consistent between baristas. Nothing is worse than getting the best mocha ever on morning shift but a mocha that's too sweet on afternoon shift. Time all shots. This is a trick statement, as often depending on espresso machines, watching a pull is a better taste judgement than timing the shot. Come up with a method of judging acceptable shots and stick to it. Always dump bad shots in front of employees. Employees watch managers to learn acceptable behaviors. Put together a statement for all employees that states all ingredients, measurements, and recipes.
Methodology: Taste everything you produce. Milk should always be kept cold, and steamed just prior to use. Never resteam milk. Yes, you can taste resteamed milk. Serve between 140 and 160f. Syrup shots vary greatly according to brand. Taste everything. And this means taste it hot and iced. If you plan on serving it, make sure you've tasted it. Syrup shots should be between 1 ounce and 1.5 ounces. Espresso shots should be between .5 oz and 1.25 oz. Experimentation regulations: When testing a drink, try it both iced and hot. Let drinks sit for at least 30 minutes. The majority of drinks will be drunk within that time. If it skins up, curdles, or separates, don't offer it. Steam milk for testing new drinks to 160f, as some ingredients will curdle with heat. Preparation setup: As a rule, place the most concentrated ingredient into the least concentrated. Espresso shots always go into the milk for a drink. Use heat to your advantage. Use the espresso shots to melt the chocolate in a mocha. Though it sounds redundant, always use cold milk for iced drinks. Steamed milk should never be allowed to cool for use in iced drinks. Steamed milk has chemically changed from its non steamed counterpart, and the texture of steamed milk is undesirable in iced drinks. Come up with a method of calling drinks and use it. There's nothing more unprofessional than not knowing what drink you're making. Drink calling is based on assumptions and order; here's a basic calling order: Size Hot or Iced Regular or Decaf, Half Caffeine Type of Milk; whole, breve, skim, percent The drink itself Extras Now for assumptions: Calling out a 'mocha' has a lot of assumptions. First, only call out the size if it deviates from the most popular. If you serve mostly 16 oz drinks, don't call out a medium, only call out the small and large sizes. If hot is most popular, don't call it out, only call out iced. Only call out decaf or half caf, as necessary. Decide what milk you're going to use most often, and only call out deviations. Decide whether or not you'll always use whip on mochas, and therefore an 'extra' on a mocha would be no whip, or the addition of a syrup. Example: Call out a 'Mocha' rather than a 16 oz hot caffeinated whole milk mocha with whip.
Milk: Always use cold milk in cold drinks. Never resteam milk. Steam enough for the drinks you have ordered, use the milk, then rinse the container. Different dairies produce milks of far different qualities. Sample all the types of milk you have available. Steaming milk is simple: Fill a cold metal pitcher with fresh cold milk. Use a thermometer. Start with the steam wand about one inch below the surface of the milk. Turn on the steam wand, and slowly lower the container. You're increasing the volume of the milk with the steam. You'll hear a slight hissing/ spitting noise. If you don't hear this, but rather a high pitched scream, lower the container; the wand is below the surface of the milk. If it's spitting all over the place, raise the container, the wand is too far above the surface of the milk. Stretch the milk, thus creating foam, until 100 degrees, then bury the wand in the milk making sure that the milk is swirling about. Turn the steam off at about 140, the milk will rise another 5-10 degrees. Serve immediately at 140-160 degrees. Milk quickly separates, leaving you with dry foam on top, and steamed milk below. The whole reason for the steaming in the first place rather than 'warming' is for texture. Don't let the milk separate before serving. There are one hundred methods to a cappuccino. The trick is that you treat the milk the same no matter what drink you're making. A cappuccino's beauty is in the dense foam created by the steaming process, not by dry foam created by letting the milk separate. Pour rapidly from the top of the steam pitcher for a cappuccino. For a latte, give the milk 15 or so seconds, and pour slowly from the bottom of the pitcher. Types Skim: It's considered that skim produces better foam. No. Skim produces 'dryer' foam, and foams more easily if you're not practiced. Skim's trick is foaming very slowly to achieve the same rich texture as from whole milk, difficult, but not impossible. Whole: This will be your most commonly used milk. This is an unspoken standard set by all coffeehouses. 2 percent: It is often easier to keep a supply of skim and whole milks, and produce a 'percent' milk upon request, unless your volume dictates otherwise. Half and Half, or 'Breve': Yes, it's a higher fat content. It's difficult to steam and achieve a good foam, but not impossible. It's just really heavy, don't rush steaming it, and don't foam it above 100 degrees, or you'll loose that sweet flavor. A good trick is a 'percent breve' using equal parts whole and half and half. Deliciously rich foam. 'Other Milks' Rice and Soy Milks: Yes, keep at least one on hand. They often get treated like decafs and just ignored, but they have a flavor unto themselves, not bad, just different. Especially here, taste everything available to you, there are hundreds of different brands. Rice is generally thinner, soy can easily be 'grainy' in texture. Experiment. No, they don't foam well, but you'll find a big difference in brands. Be VERY careful steaming them, as they want to curdle and scald rather than foam. Evaporated: This is a really finicky milk that oxidizes rapidly. We've played around with it, but between the texture and the one hour shelf life, this milk is better left to cooking. Condensed: This is the unsung hero of the coffeehouse. Nobody knows about it, and it's more useful than chocolate. Seriously. When you're setting up new drinks, go buy some cans and play around with them. Condensed varies widely by brand, taste them all. Condensed milk is the main ingredient in white chocolate. An excellent white chocolate is made from condensed, vanilla and cocoa butter. Use it in the proportions you use chocolate. Parmalot and shelf stable milks: Not something you necessarily offer as a substitute to milk, as price is restrictive, but they produce a wonderful texture and a different flavor. At least pick up a container and play around with it so you can say that you have. Goat: Goat milk is not even an option unless you can find a local dairy that produces it regularly. The typical goat milk you find on the grocery store shelf has been treated to prolong its life, and you will find the flavor undesirable. If you can find a good source for it, the texture is quite similar to cow's milk, but the flavor is much different and worth experimenting with. Eggnog: A seasonal treat. Allot of places are beginning to offer it. It's something different, not necessarily better. Far different texture, has a tendency to want to scald. It's really rich and will often cause stomach upset even at sixteen ounces. A good trick is to cut the eggnog with whole milk to cut the richness. There's some good eggnog syrups available also worth a look if you're going for the flavor. The big trick with dairy is to enjoy it. You're going to serve a lot more milk than you do coffee, yet dairy is often the afterthought. Embrace the milk, taste all the types you can get your hands on. If you're not passionate about the product neither are the employees and therefore the customers. Set up a milk cupping, this will impart a certain pride to the milks you decide to use, rather than, 'we just picked up the first and cheapest stuff we found'.
Chocolate and Syrups: There are one hundred different choices for syrups. The trick is; first figure out which syrups you can get easily. The most delicious syrup you've ever had isn't going to help you if it has to be freighted from Europe. Get samples of each brand, and taste them. See if the citrus flavors curdle hot milk, see if the heavier syrups (caramel, nuts) dissolve easily in cold drinks. Be realistic in that every syrup has its best flavors, no one brand will satisfy you one hundred percent. A good selection of popular syrups to offer would be: Vanilla, even if you don't carry 'syrups' have vanilla, very useful. Hazelnut Caramel Raspberry I know each brand has a stack of flavors, but this list is the backbone of your offering. Pick up cinnamon and maybe another fruit or two for fun. Cherry, strawberry, and orange are our next most popular. Almond, and Irish Creme are our next favorites, and with ten bottles you have a good selection, but you don't need another room to back stock. Chocolate Get samples, taste them. My tendency is to want to offer multiple chocolates, but you'll run into all kinds of problems with this level of choices. First, taste them and then decide if you want powder or syrup. Big texture difference. Decide milk or dark. A nice trick with chocolate is to decide which will be your primary chocolate for use in all of your mochas and hot chocolates. Then keep a can of 'bakers cocoa' on hand for something different. A heaping teaspoon of cocoa and a shot of vanilla make an excellent chocolate. A mocha is not meant to be 'sweet'. It should be a balance between the chocolate and the espresso. Base your opinion of each chocolate in a drink, don't taste it straight. Chocolates will behave much differently once they get in the cup. Figure out a method to consistently measure shots. Use a pump for chocolate, a scoop for powder, a shot glass for syrups. Yes it's an extra step but you'll be rewarded by always serving consistently sweetened drinks. Order of ingredients is important when using syrups. As a rule of thumb, put the least concentrated ingredients in the cup first. A fruit syrup in hot milk will want to curdle no matter what brand you use; put the syrup in last after all the other ingredients, and stir.
Pulling Shots: The espresso shots that you pull each and every day are the one deciding factor of your success. Yes, people will drive out of their way for the best shots ever. Yes, they can tell the difference, and yes, the idea of the coffeehouse has been around long enough to teach a good minority of your customers the taste differences between a 15 second pull and a 35 second pull. Don't risk your success on serving one bad shot. That bad shot could be going to the local newspaper reviewer. Espresso shots are coffee pulled through an espresso machine with water that is at 193 to 200 degrees f. The water is pushed through the finely ground coffee at 9 to 11 atmospheres. The pressure is what produces 'crema' or the reason you're in business in the first place. There are three parts to an espresso shot; the heart, the body and the crema. If you pull into shot glasses you can watch each of these parts pull. Espresso should be measured at 7 to 9 grams per 'shot'. .5 oz to 1.25 oz of water is a 'shot'. Typically, .5 oz is called a 'short shot', or ristretto, 1 oz or more a 'long shot', or lungo. All of this needs to happen within 20 to 30 seconds. If all of these proportions and measurements are followed, you have 'espresso'. The secret of this extraction as opposed to other methods of brewing are flavor, effect, and time. Consistently producing coffee of this quality and strength would be impossible with a drip machine or french press, but irregardless, the quality between the two is immeasurable.
House Coffee: House coffee falls easily into three types of commercial production: Urn style, Drip style, and French press style. Each style presents its own qualities, what is of more importance is setting standards and sticking to them. Coffee ages incredibly rapidly once it's brewed. Come up with a system that will allow you to brew only enough coffee that it will be served within one hour. Try for a system that allows coffee to sit for only a half hour. There are five standards set fourth by the Coffee Brewing Center of the SCAA, three can be set by proper maintenance, thus you have two to play with. Good Water: All of your brewing equipment should be set up on a water system that at least purifies the water and then softens it. This can be a simple Italian style water softener with a pre filter, or a really expensive setup, it's all about the maintenance you're willing to put up with. Clean Equipment: Whatever the container that you brew into, always keep it clean, yes stuff can grow in there if you let it. The brewing device itself will remain for the most part in proper working order if you follow good water practices. Correct Temperature: Use your milk thermometers, check the temperature of the water coming out of the brew head by filling a cup and measuring that. Shoot for an optimal range of 195-205f. All commercial brewers have a thermostat you can set. Now for the stuff you can play around with: Proper Grind: The grind will have the biggest effect on flavor and total dissolved solids. Try every grind you can, taste all of it. Remember there's many different things that grind coffee beans, and each will impart its own inherent flavor. Correct Time: This is a range of 3-8 minutes. This will also impact the total dissolved solids, and effect flavor and oil contents. The quicker the water passes, the less oil, less caffeine. The longer water spends with the coffee, the higher the oil content, total dissolved solids, and caffeine. What is most important in this whole process is that you set up a system that you like, stick to it, and taste everything. This will guarantee the perfect house coffee.