Hello baristas!

Hi all coffee lovers!

We attended to a barista course! It was so much fun!

Checking the temperature.

Our beautiful friend.

Frothing the milk is thrilling!

Hot chocolate, long black & Long John.

Good cup, bad cup.

We hadn't known that brewing coffee is SO difficult! But now we understand better why you sometimes don't get good coffee even in a decent coffee shop. The most important thing is the brew time, which is a function of humidity, grind size, packing pressure and machine pressure - of which only grind size can be trimmed and actually needs to be done during the day when humidity changes.

The grind affects how fast the espresso pours. It should take 25-30 seconds. We tasted coffee extracted for 23 and 26 seconds (i.e. slightly finer grind): the first was bitter and tasted in the back of the tongue, the second deliciously smooth and soft tasting in the front of the tongue - amazing change with just a 3 second difference!

Also the milk temperature is quite delicate - without a thermometer it is pretty much impossible to know the temperature. So don't trust baristas that don't use a thermometer! Skin burns in 44C but the milk should be 65C (perfect) and one can't tell that by hand. Anything over 70C will burn the milk and ruin the coffee.

A perfect short macchiato.

Instructions.

A crappy flat white and a yummy caffe mocha.

Anna-Mari participated also on a second session to receive a nationally recognized certificate. First we played with melted chocolate on cappuccinos:

Flowers.

Practicing how to cover errors...

We couldn't drink all the amount of coffee we had made no matter how pretty or tasty it was. I tried my best to quickly lick off the chocolaty foam before discarding. But here goes the rest:

Bucket of deliciousness.

I almost lost my phone while taking photos. I dropped my phone and it hit the rim of the bucket but dropped on the outside! How lucky was that!

The next lesson was to do some latte art:

And flat white art:

More flowers.

Last lesson was free pouring. It should look like this:

http://hubpages.com/food/How-To-Make-Great-Coffee-Using-An-Espresso-Machine

My style:

Getting there!

Have you seen this sort of leaves on the planet? Anywhere?

Bye-bye my lovely machine friend. See ya later!