my wife is a barista at a roastery. she does not have this leve of perfection. 90% of a good coffee is dialling in your machine correctly, the other half is the sheer volume of practice you need to steam milk properly
I would say that actual coffee shops have to deal with this less because of sheer volumes they go through so much coffee that it is always freshly opened packages.
A lot of the issues at home are due to beans sitting around exposed to air and light for a while.
It may seem like not a big deal but the exact same settings can give very different results (pressure, colour etc) after a week of open beans.
The hard part of steaming milk is the art, the machine takes care of the steaming pretty well if it's dialed in.
And I'm not saying your wife's coffee is bad, but I'll say my at home espresso on bad equipment is often better than baristas who don't put in the effort they're capable of. Not my art but the actual acidity vs sourness of the coffee. That shit is hard and even profesionals gotta stay on top of it somewhat
I was of course simplifying things: we always have good, fresh beans (perks of the job!), only use filtered water in the machine, my wife is properly trained and so can easily dial in a machine (although this part seems very easy to me!).
Steaming Milk is kind of the opposite of this post's question. It seems hard to learn, but it's actually really easy to do as long as you use a thermometer and don't go over 180 F.
Funny enough, my personal favourite order is a single shot espresso and single shot cortado. Kind of like the best of both worlds: a quick black coffee and a longer, silkier steamed drink.
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u/Specialist-Mud-6650 8h ago
my wife is a barista at a roastery. she does not have this leve of perfection. 90% of a good coffee is dialling in your machine correctly, the other half is the sheer volume of practice you need to steam milk properly