Oh My Brew, I Love You

About some time ago I wrote an article about a class I attended at a Community Centre. That article languished in my drawer for a long time because there didn't seem to be any relevant opportunity to post it up.

So here is my experience with brewing coffee. I'm a coffee lover - I usually go for the caramel macchiato from Starbucks, and if I could I'd have one everyday. There's something so heady about the smell of the coffee beans, and when you step into any coffee-brewery outlet... pure heaven.


Oh My Brew, I Love You

I love coffee.

I especially love the smell of the fresh brew. It perks me up in the mornings, and keeps me awake all day (and occasionally all night as well).

Now, to be honest, my coffee experiences are limited to watching baristas behind the counter of my favourite coffee joints.

So you can understand why I was excited when I read about this Do-It-Yourself American coffee-brewing workshop.

I entered the classroom and smelt coffee all around. Yummy.

Then I saw the contraptions sitting on the counter. I saw shiny stainless steel and a lot of buttons and knobs.
Further down was another (smaller) machine with even more buttons than Starship Enterprise.

Now this can’t be good, I thought.

We had to learn how to operate a semi-automatic espresso machine (by the way, an espresso is the base of every single cup of coffee - be it lattes or cappucinos)

Now whoever gave it that name obviously lied, because it is neither anything automatic nor even halfway there. It was like a chemistry class - and I never did do well in that subject.

Scoop the ground coffee into a portafilter (like a cup on a handle) which is attached to the espresso machine.
You have to press the coffee powder tightly into the portafilter with a miniature dumbell.

Press too hard, the coffee drips out and tastes awfully bitter. Press too lightly, and the coffee becomes diluted.

Froth (give it foam) the milk with the pressure jet attached to the espresso machine. Again, another flurry of activities.

About one-third of a cup of milk must be placed just about half a milimetre away from the surface of the milk, so that the pressure-jet can steam it exactly to get foam on top.

Too much milk means you will just boil the milk without any foam - and too little milk will mean you will simply burn it.

Now take the espresso you have made (a round of applause, please) and pour the milk in.

But wait! What exactly do you want to drink? A cappucino? Pour half the milk in. Or a latte? Go all the way with the milk.

But hold the foam, please. That has to go precisely on top of your latte-cappucino-espresso so that you can etch patterns in it using chocolate sauce.

Latte art (can we call it cappucino art, please?) is a form of drawing on top of the foam. Pretty, yes, but difficult. If your foam is weak it sinks in and leaves nary a trace.

I tried to draw Mickey’s face. I got as far as the circles before I realised that foam is not exactly helpful (it was as stable as Mariah’s performance in Glitter).

So out of sheer desperation, I drew a line through the three circles. And somehow I managed to get a series of hearts and leaf motifs.

The experience of a fully-automatic machine, in contrast, wasn’t anything to crow about.

A cup here, a button there, and you’ve got yourself your espresso. Even the pressure jet for the milk was specially designed to allow the milk to be evenly frothed wherever you placed it.

But even a non-barista like myself found that the automated machine was lacking in the fun and experience that the other espresso machine had, despite the complicated operations.

It’s all about the joy of the experience.

But I’m still far from being a professional barista, though it has spurred my interest greatly.

So the next time you order a coffee from Starbucks, forgive the barista if he takes too long to get your coffee. It might just be me behind the counter.