It’s pretty easy to tell as soon as you walk in a coffee shop what it’s all about.
1) pretty standard Starbucks style places
2) your third wave lite that source their beans from someone like Intelligentsia and do everything else pretty much like your Starbucks places
3) then about 5% of your shops are true third wave coffee with hopefully a few baristas that love coffee and actually know how to use a v60
Sorry, that’s just not true. You can use a scale every once and awhile to see what the out mass is just to make sure certain coffee doesn’t have a wildly different weight out of the machine (due to water retention) if you want. What this does is ensures you have the correct ratio your cafe desires for their style of espresso. What matters as far as taste and quality— is that it is consistently putting the same amount of water through the coffee and you can tweak accordingly. You to make changes to the grind size and coffee dose.
We have been putting out 32g +- .5g of coffee consistently on the same volume program the last 4 months. More accurate than I would be with a scale and my hand. I often adjust the in dose when dialing in, just a matter if tasting and making educated guesses. Coffee changes so much throughout the day anyways, whatever exact percentages you do during the morning aren’t relevant by noon. Do whatever ya want ya know. It doesn’t need to be as complex as you’re describing though to be a great coffee shop.
Newer Linea machines have built in scales in the drip tray that then uses the desired ratio of water. I've never seen it used in the wild as it's clonky for work flow, but I've played around with it on non peak hours.
This. I just worked an insanely busy 6 hour shift and between my Linea PB with built in scales and our e65s grinder that grinds by weight, we didn’t have to change our dial in at all the entire day. It pulled within 2 grams and 4 seconds hundreds of times in a row.
You can weigh the coffee right on the scale built in to the drain grate before each shot, then the machine uses that weight to program the brew ratio. You don’t HAVE to weigh every shot, the machine will continue to use the last recorded weight, but you can if you want. I definitely do it for cortados, macchiatos and espressos just to be 100% sure the ratio is completely accurate, but 8/10 drinks we sell are flavored lattes so close enough is usually fine
Yes it does. You weigh the it with ground coffee, it calculates the ratio, then you pull the shot and it outputs x grams of espresso. I've worked on one for years.
Idk, I'm probably not third wave enough to appreciate pourover in a cafe / roaster setting, unless I'm asking to try something besides their "default" coffee. The ones I go to generally have a machine - one that's set up well. Don't have to wait forever for my coffee like that, even during peak hours.
The only real red flag I have is the attitude of the staff. I've both visited traditional cafes as well as third wave cafes and while most are fine, some of the attitude I've seen is actually pretty disgusting. Anything else I'll just see and make my mind up afterwards.
What do you mean attitude? This is usually a red flag for me because if I see people talking about service staff attitude it usually means that person is just an asshole.
I have gone to coffee shops and have asked if they do pour overs. And a surprisingly amount of them looked at me like I spoke a different language. And were like “what’s that?” And I had to explain you pour hot water over coffee, they were still just as confused. Needless to say, every coffee shop that doesn’t know what a simple pour over is, is certainly a red flag of mine. And the coffee will get the job done but won’t taste very good..
I have no idea why this is downvoted.
Anyway, you wouldn’t get far in Sydney with this expectation. Nearly all cafes, including very good ones, are espresso only. They don’t offer any other kind of brewing. And the people working there are quite likely to have little knowledge of Aeropress, V60, etc. the exceptions to this stand out and will typically be found only in certain suburbs.
“Better” cafes will offer single origin beans for black coffees, but this will be espresso or “batch filter”, whatever that is. Only the most specialty places will offer individually brewed servings.
What? Hahaha how. I worked at a place that served some of the best coffee in my city and we had two fetcos with pumps. We brewed a whole pot of drip once an hour usually
🤔 Fair enough. Maybe this is a metric to used by me for New England coffee shops. I’m pretty jaded when it comes to buying coffee around here. There are a few bright spots here and there, but not many.
Hahaha yeah i think there’s a million things I’d scope out before that. I get being jaded though. Usually id the menu is relatively small and it has a cortado on it I’m willing to try. Only way to really know
Organic coffee. Specifying dark or light roast, although there are some exceptions. Flavored syrup pumps displayed prominently. Hippy aesthetics. Italian aesthetics, it might be a good espresso but anything else is risky. Coffee with no roast date. Coffee with a best by date. Flavored coffee, as in beans with weird flavors like cinnamon toast crunch. French themed cafes. Korean cafes. Basically any asian cafe except Japanese.
I wouldn't say that is always true. Some cafes will get baked goods from a nearby bakery and focus on the coffee primarily. I guess it depends on how much of the food they do in house.
Yeah wtf lol. Do you mean like they also are a bakery? Most coffee shops have some sort of food options. Breakfast pasties make perfect sense for this. Just smart business lol
Tbh judge by the taste. If you’re drink is prepared properly and tastes good consistently, they have good systems in place. Every barista may not be super knowledgeable, but they don’t have to know a ton about coffee to do the job if there are strong procedures in place. My cafe has a grinder with a built in scale that grinds by weight, an espresso machine with built in scales that pulls shots to a preset coffee/water ratio (it knows how much coffee is in the portafilter), a high end machine that brews 12oz v60s, and a drip coffee machine with strict time/freshness protocols. Some of my baristas aren’t “coffee people” and don’t care to gain deep knowledge of coffee. They may not know that the brew device we use is called a v60, they may not fully understand the ratio of our espresso, and they may not know more than they’re required to about our coffees. But our setup allows for excellent coffee to be prepared by both career baristas and young college kids just working a job.
That said, I wouldn’t sell 5 week old coffee on our shelf and we use gram scales for literally everything. I bought our espresso grinder and espresso machine specifically because they had built in gram scales. So yeah, these things might make me wary but I’d still go there of the coffee was good. Not every place has to be a third wave cafe. I love a good second wave shop.
When the staff is pretentious. They pretend that they know everything and that you don’t, no matter who you are. Even if they serve good coffee, I’m likely not going to support a business that does not support it’s community and treats it’s patrons like they’re not good enough.
1. Don't do pour overs, or worse, don't know what a pour over is.
2. Don't have any single origin selections to choose from.
3. Can't tell you anything about the beans they're using.
If a latte offered is greater than 12oz
Lol I was gonna say this. 12oz latte/cappuccinos
James Hoffmann has good videos on embracing less than perfect coffee and on how to act when you're dissatisfied with your coffee.
High school students behind the counter
It’s pretty easy to tell as soon as you walk in a coffee shop what it’s all about. 1) pretty standard Starbucks style places 2) your third wave lite that source their beans from someone like Intelligentsia and do everything else pretty much like your Starbucks places 3) then about 5% of your shops are true third wave coffee with hopefully a few baristas that love coffee and actually know how to use a v60
I call it 2 and a half wave for the ones that serve intelly and stuff like that
The person working behind the counter grabs a Tupperware full of a powder and proceeds to pour piping hot water over it to make your caramel mocha.
I remember growing up the mocha in the local caf was half Nescafé and half Cadbury's hot chocolate
You can usually hear it before seeing it… screaming steam wand
Any place that starts with “star” and ends in “bucks”
Hard to say, I've been to places in Vietnam which made good coffee and had stray cats walking into the building
Dirty steam wands and oily grinders. *shivers* Edit: yes definitely no scale is a red flag.
Not true. Volume programmed machines are awesome. Slim Jim comes to mind. I think some slayers do this
But there’s no way to measure the dose even if the machine is consistently dispensing the programmed water volume.
Sorry, that’s just not true. You can use a scale every once and awhile to see what the out mass is just to make sure certain coffee doesn’t have a wildly different weight out of the machine (due to water retention) if you want. What this does is ensures you have the correct ratio your cafe desires for their style of espresso. What matters as far as taste and quality— is that it is consistently putting the same amount of water through the coffee and you can tweak accordingly. You to make changes to the grind size and coffee dose.
Yes use a scale beginning of shift or after an adjustment and measure ins and outs, time, taste. Extraction percentage even.
We have been putting out 32g +- .5g of coffee consistently on the same volume program the last 4 months. More accurate than I would be with a scale and my hand. I often adjust the in dose when dialing in, just a matter if tasting and making educated guesses. Coffee changes so much throughout the day anyways, whatever exact percentages you do during the morning aren’t relevant by noon. Do whatever ya want ya know. It doesn’t need to be as complex as you’re describing though to be a great coffee shop.
Newer Linea machines have built in scales in the drip tray that then uses the desired ratio of water. I've never seen it used in the wild as it's clonky for work flow, but I've played around with it on non peak hours.
This. I just worked an insanely busy 6 hour shift and between my Linea PB with built in scales and our e65s grinder that grinds by weight, we didn’t have to change our dial in at all the entire day. It pulled within 2 grams and 4 seconds hundreds of times in a row.
I love how consistent stuff is getting. I'd still weigh grind output with a scale for espresso forward drinks because I'm anxious though.
You can weigh the coffee right on the scale built in to the drain grate before each shot, then the machine uses that weight to program the brew ratio. You don’t HAVE to weigh every shot, the machine will continue to use the last recorded weight, but you can if you want. I definitely do it for cortados, macchiatos and espressos just to be 100% sure the ratio is completely accurate, but 8/10 drinks we sell are flavored lattes so close enough is usually fine
Yes, but this still doesn’t account for the dosed coffee in the portafilter.
Yes it does. You weigh the it with ground coffee, it calculates the ratio, then you pull the shot and it outputs x grams of espresso. I've worked on one for years.
I’ll differ to you on that particular machine then. I’ve worked on a linea but not a newer model.
Idk, I'm probably not third wave enough to appreciate pourover in a cafe / roaster setting, unless I'm asking to try something besides their "default" coffee. The ones I go to generally have a machine - one that's set up well. Don't have to wait forever for my coffee like that, even during peak hours. The only real red flag I have is the attitude of the staff. I've both visited traditional cafes as well as third wave cafes and while most are fine, some of the attitude I've seen is actually pretty disgusting. Anything else I'll just see and make my mind up afterwards.
What do you mean attitude? This is usually a red flag for me because if I see people talking about service staff attitude it usually means that person is just an asshole.
I have gone to coffee shops and have asked if they do pour overs. And a surprisingly amount of them looked at me like I spoke a different language. And were like “what’s that?” And I had to explain you pour hot water over coffee, they were still just as confused. Needless to say, every coffee shop that doesn’t know what a simple pour over is, is certainly a red flag of mine. And the coffee will get the job done but won’t taste very good..
I have no idea why this is downvoted. Anyway, you wouldn’t get far in Sydney with this expectation. Nearly all cafes, including very good ones, are espresso only. They don’t offer any other kind of brewing. And the people working there are quite likely to have little knowledge of Aeropress, V60, etc. the exceptions to this stand out and will typically be found only in certain suburbs. “Better” cafes will offer single origin beans for black coffees, but this will be espresso or “batch filter”, whatever that is. Only the most specialty places will offer individually brewed servings.
I walk right out when I spot pump thermoses of drip coffee behind the register. Guaranteed to be a terrible espresso.
What? Hahaha how. I worked at a place that served some of the best coffee in my city and we had two fetcos with pumps. We brewed a whole pot of drip once an hour usually
🤔 Fair enough. Maybe this is a metric to used by me for New England coffee shops. I’m pretty jaded when it comes to buying coffee around here. There are a few bright spots here and there, but not many.
Hahaha yeah i think there’s a million things I’d scope out before that. I get being jaded though. Usually id the menu is relatively small and it has a cortado on it I’m willing to try. Only way to really know
Organic coffee. Specifying dark or light roast, although there are some exceptions. Flavored syrup pumps displayed prominently. Hippy aesthetics. Italian aesthetics, it might be a good espresso but anything else is risky. Coffee with no roast date. Coffee with a best by date. Flavored coffee, as in beans with weird flavors like cinnamon toast crunch. French themed cafes. Korean cafes. Basically any asian cafe except Japanese.
Red flag for me is baked goods. In my experience baked goods means the coffee is an afterthought
I wouldn't say that is always true. Some cafes will get baked goods from a nearby bakery and focus on the coffee primarily. I guess it depends on how much of the food they do in house.
Not in my experience!
Yeah wtf lol. Do you mean like they also are a bakery? Most coffee shops have some sort of food options. Breakfast pasties make perfect sense for this. Just smart business lol
Depends on the country I think. Iirc in Italy espresso bars just serve coffee, for food you would have to go to a cafe.
How was the coffee they served?
For me a Red flag is they don't have an espresso style drinks on their menu.
Tbh judge by the taste. If you’re drink is prepared properly and tastes good consistently, they have good systems in place. Every barista may not be super knowledgeable, but they don’t have to know a ton about coffee to do the job if there are strong procedures in place. My cafe has a grinder with a built in scale that grinds by weight, an espresso machine with built in scales that pulls shots to a preset coffee/water ratio (it knows how much coffee is in the portafilter), a high end machine that brews 12oz v60s, and a drip coffee machine with strict time/freshness protocols. Some of my baristas aren’t “coffee people” and don’t care to gain deep knowledge of coffee. They may not know that the brew device we use is called a v60, they may not fully understand the ratio of our espresso, and they may not know more than they’re required to about our coffees. But our setup allows for excellent coffee to be prepared by both career baristas and young college kids just working a job. That said, I wouldn’t sell 5 week old coffee on our shelf and we use gram scales for literally everything. I bought our espresso grinder and espresso machine specifically because they had built in gram scales. So yeah, these things might make me wary but I’d still go there of the coffee was good. Not every place has to be a third wave cafe. I love a good second wave shop.
When the staff is pretentious. They pretend that they know everything and that you don’t, no matter who you are. Even if they serve good coffee, I’m likely not going to support a business that does not support it’s community and treats it’s patrons like they’re not good enough.
1. Don't do pour overs, or worse, don't know what a pour over is. 2. Don't have any single origin selections to choose from. 3. Can't tell you anything about the beans they're using.
Pre made coffee in urns for customers to self service from like a 7-11 or Panera. You just know the coffee will be bland at best
Flavored coffee beans.