Training

Because of the increasing chance for me to work as the Monday afternoon barista (a little more here), I spent a some time getting more training from one of the baristas that work at the shop. While I felt pretty comfortable working behind the bar and serving drinks, the prior week mid-service we ran out of the beans we were using and I had to switch coffees. This presented me with two problems, the first is that I have never had to dial in a coffee well so quickly and the second was I'm still not hugely familiar with our equipment exacerbating the first problem. It also didn't help that there were customers waiting. I also wanted to  get some steaming tips on our machine a Famea Legend 3 group with a four hole tip and too much steaming power.

We started out by changing coffees to practice dialing in a coffee. The first shot was underextracted, 19.2 grams in a 17-19g VST pulled over 20 seconds. Overly sour and bitter. We tightened the grind on the Mazzer Robur and dosed about the same amount 19.1 grams. This time a little too long, about 40 seconds. Even so, the shot was very nice, fruity with hints of chocolate, nuts and caramel. Just to see how the flavor changed we made the grind a touch more coarsely. 19.2 grams in 35 seconds. The flavor profile was pretty much the same, but the fruit acidity got a touch more lemony and rounded out very nicely. We left it there. 

Next, we did a little steaming and latte art. I got some tips on temperature, how to handle our machine and found out I still need practice on my latte art. Overall a great experience. It was very interesting to get a guided tour of working with coffee from someone who knew so much.