How To Know If You Are Getting A Good Coffee Before You Even Place An Order
You can walk into a nice looking café and pay a premium for a coffee, which comes out of an impressive machine, only to take a sip and go…yeah…that exists.
Congratulations, you just paid $5 for a mediocre experience. For the same price, you could have got 5 coffees from 7/11 or munched down a whole box of no-doze.
The advice I am about to bestow upon you will remove bad coffee from your life permanently. It’s more effective than sugar at covering up the taste of bad espresso Prevention is better than a cure, so this random high-effort medium article will teach you how to know if you are getting a good coffee before you even place an order.
Rule #1 The Coffee Shop Décor Means Nothing.
Coffee is made by a person, with a machine, behind a counter. Assuming they started off with quality beans, the taste of the coffee is really determined by one thing, and that’s the actions of the person making it.
Let’s make that rule number two
Rule #2 Watch The Barista
Here’s an out. If reading big articles isn’t your idea of fun, watch 2013 WBC Finals, and listen to Matt Perger talk about how he makes coffee real good.
It’s Okay Matt I’ll Take it From Here…Teee…Heee.
Step 1. Check that the Hopper is Clean
This is a hopper. It is a plastic bulb like thing which feeds the beans into the grinder.
The hopper holds the coffee beans in their unground form. It is the first place coffee beans go when they come out of the bag.
The condition of the hopper is super fucking important.
The taste of coffee comes from the oils/terpenes in the beans. These same oils if exposed to oxygen can go rancid and make coffee taste HORRIBLE!
Check to make sure the hopper is clean. If there is any brown residue on the plastic, what you are seeing is a built-up layer of oils.
Step 2. Watch How the Barista Tamps
When a barista tamps the coffee beans, they press it down into the group head. (The basket looking thing). This is done to evenly compact the grind. It’s important to tamp evenly because you don’t want your coffee to burn or be undercooked on one side. The group head is filled with ground coffee, tamped, and then it is locked into the machine.
Here Comes The Extraction
Water is forced through the coffee grind by the machine, and all of the flavours, tastes, and the caffeine are extracted from the beans by
this pressurised water.
Most commercial coffee machines will pump water at 9 bars of atmospheric pressure through the grind. This water is very hot, so if it passes too slowly through the coffee grind it will burn. Similarly, if it passes too quickly, it won’t extract properly. It’s like cooking in an oven where you control the temperature with pressure instead of knobs and dials.
The barista’s tamping technique should always be the same or the coffee is unpredictable. The might be getting different pressures on different shots and burning the coffee.
If you notice variations in how they are tamping, 2 taps on the bench, 3 taps. Uneven coffee in the group head or any other inconsistencies run a mile. You are about to pay for a bad coffee.
Step 3. Check To See If the Barista is Timing The Shot
Coffee is as much a science as it is an art. Don’t believe me? Look at this formula.
Extraction yield % = Brewed Coffee[g] x TDS[%] /Coffee Grounds[g] E.g. (espresso) 36g brewed
Clever people, who know more than I do about how that works, say that a short should take between 25–35 seconds. It varies a little bit depending on beans, preference, climate and altitude but as a rule of thumb, a good barista will time a shot to around thirty seconds. I sound so fucking pretentious right now.
The majority of commercial coffee machines has inbuilt volumetrics. This means they measure the volume of water which passes through them, and they pump out the same amount of water every time.
Do you see how all of the variables are fixed?
The pressure, the amount of water, the temperature.
The only real variables that the barista controls are the grind and the tamp.
Luckily for us decerning customers, this makes it pretty easy to tell if you’re getting a good coffee before you place an order. Just get out your phone and time the shots being poured. Press go the second the barista presses the button, you can hear the machine make a“djdenk” kind of sound, 5 seconds either side of 30 seconds, you’re good to go.
Another thing to note is that some machines pour smaller shots for smaller coffees. Do not time a shot going into a small coffee. The machine will put out less water, and this, in turn, quickens the shot time. Also won’t work for pully lever coffee machines. These are only for wizards.
Step 4. Talk to the barista
Ask them if they time their shots and when they last adjusted the grind.
I’ve sat through a number of coffee training sessions. The difference between you and the people who come to teach you is that they know how to time shots really well, and they can draw swan latte art. That’s it.
I do not subscribe to the idea that a barista can get by on talent alone. No one has the talent to magically set the grind. They have to know what they are doing, and why they are doing it. Unfortunately, hospitality is an inefficient beast filled with stubborn people. This knowledge is not widespread and bad coffees run rampant.
Some final words
This knowledge and the scientific method is what third-wave coffee is all about. We are leaving the dark ages, and your stand against bad coffee is ushering in the renaissance. No one wants to pay for a bad
coffee, and for too long we have settled on whatever was put in our cups. With your eyes alone, you can deduce if you are going to get good coffee in under a minute. Try it out for yourself.
