Sugar and soy ruins perfectly good coffee say Sydney baristas

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Sugar and soy ruins perfectly good coffee say Sydney baristas

25 May 2011

Sydney baristas are increasingly calling the shots when it comes to brewing what they consider to be ideal coffee, by refusing to accommodate requests to add sugar, use skim (low fat) or soy milks, and decaffeinated coffee, or make brews “extra hot”, a dictate some customers describe as excessive:

Bar Italia in Leichardt is famous for its “No soy, no skim” stand. Customers have been known to storm out of Barefoot Coffee Traders in Manly which won’t do decaf or large cups. Kafenio Cafe in Cronulla declares: “No skim or babycinos … Don’t even ask!” “The guy behind the coffee machine … reminded me of the Soup Nazi off Seinfeld, but it wasn’t funny … get over the delicate genius syndrome,” said one Kafenio customer on online restaurant guide Eatability. Said another: “The barista refused three separate times to make the coffee that was ordered. If this was a hard order I would have understood but nowhere else [finds] a double shot 3/4 latte hard.”

Maybe the majority of coffee shop customers want full cream milk and caffeine brews, but the stance sounds harsh to me. What of the people with lactose intolerance? As for refusing to serve babycinos, that doesn’t seem too family-friendly to me.

Originally published Wednesday 25 May 2011.

How to make your own green tea… matcha cappuccinos

23 March 2010

A green tea cappuccino, that’s a new one for me, and I had the chance to try one of these beverages while out road tripping last week. I jotted down a few notes while our host prepared the drinks, so should you wish to indulge, here’s the recipe.

You certainly don’t need a coffee-making machine to whip up a green tea cappuccino. A kettle, tea cups, a mixing jug or cup, and a cordless hand-held milk frother, will do the trick, along with:

Near boiled water
Warmed, but not excessively hot, milk
Matcha green tea powder

And now to brew:

Place two heaped dessert spoons of green tea powder per tea cup into the mixing jug
Pour a third of a cup of near, but not fully, boiling water, per tea cup, into the mixing jug
Blend the tea powder and water for a minute until foam forms on top of the mixture with the milk frother
Pour an equal measure of the mixture into each tea cup
Pour the warmed milk to the mixing jug and froth
Add the frothed milk to the tea cups
Serve and enjoy

If like me, you’re a big drinker of both green tea and cappuccinos, you may find the green tea cappuccino takes some getting used to. Worth it though.

Update: a video of the brewing process (thanks to the ever vigilant Coffee Girl).

Originally published Tuesday 23 March 2010, with subsequent revisions, updates to lapsed URLs, etc.

Sophisticated Australian coffee culture sinks Starbucks

30 July 2008

While it’s of little help to the seven-hundred Australian Starbucks employees who are looking for new jobs today, you’d think any established coffee franchise would undertake some reasonably comprehensive market research before opening no less than eighty-four cafes.

This where some stores are in fairly close proximity to each other, and further, were opened in quick succession, particularly in a country which already has an entrenched coffee culture.

Associate Professor Nick Wailes, a strategic management expert at the University of Sydney, said Starbucks had failed to understand the Australian market. “Starbucks’ original success had a lot to do with the fact that it introduced European coffee culture to a market that didn’t have this tradition. Australia has a fantastic and rich coffee culture and companies like Starbucks really struggle to compete with that.” The president of Starbucks Asia Pacific, John Culver, admitted: “I think what we’ve seen is that Australia has a very sophisticated coffee culture.”

Originally published Wednesday 30 July 2008.