Do you think your role as a barista is simply frothing milk, extracting espressos or pouring coffees all day long. No way! The job entails much more than that.
At the end of the day – sure – your primary role is to wrangle the espresso machine, but a good barista is also there to create [...]
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The last time we wrote about a concert we went to we received a fairly nasty comment that we shouldn’t be writing about a George Michael concert because it had nothing to do with coffee. True! Which brings me to my next concert review Spandau Ballet (Sydney Entertainment Centre, April 23, 2010).
When tickets [...]
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In previous articles, we’ve looked at coffee blends and single origin coffees separately. Now let’s take a look at why coffee roasters favour blends, at what stage of the process they do it and finally whether drinking single origins or blends is better.
Why Do Coffee Roasters Favour Blends?
Why is it that it is rare to [...]
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I had a feeling that it was going to be a good day as I drove towards the city at dawn on Sunday. As I cruised down the hill on the Gore Hill Expressway, I saw the Opera House just peeking over the Sydney Harbour Bridge and at that precise moment in time as if [...]
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When we used to work behind espresso machines, we noted that a typical question that people would ask when they waited for their coffee was, “What blend do you use?” or “What’s in your blend?” That’s actually a pretty complicated question! You’d need a good 15 minutes to answer that properly.
The question of “What’s in [...]
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It’s surprising just how little people think about the coffee bean when they go about drinking their morning cup. Dave and I have found that a lot of people in our classes even think that that it is some kind of generic food substance – like a peanut (after all, it looks like one!) and [...]
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Sydney, Acer Arena, May 6, 2009
We don’t know how lucky we are down here in Australia. We’re a million miles from anywhere and we have a negligible population so it doesn’t make great economic sense for a big name performer or group to come here (talk to someone in New Zealand and they really [...]
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Not everyone has a choice of where they get their coffee. My local train station for example has a stretch of shops opposite but only one serves coffee (so I make mine at home before I leave for work). But if you have the luxury of choice, use it wisely. This article is designed to [...]
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We have students in our coffee art classes all the time who look at our coffee art DVD playing on the big screens as they walk in and comment, “Surely nobody has time for coffee art in a busy café!” (I wonder why they have come to such a class if they did not truly [...]
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Last time we posted a blog on this subject, the global economic crisis didn’t have a snappy acronym like GFC or GEC and people’s dinner parties were only partially being dominated by boring talk of economic stimulus packages and interest rates.Now, several months down the track, dinner parties are being completely dominated by discussions involving [...]
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There certainly seem to be an over-supply or articles in coffee magazines that are dedicated to barista competitions. These competitions seem to have captured people’s imaginations. “Can you really have a competition to make a simple cup of coffee and is it interesting to watch?” people ask. The answer to the first part of their [...]
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N.B. All prices referred to in this post are in Australian Dollars
Once upon a time in this far-flung sunburnt country of ours, people drank water, beer or tea. What coffee there was existed as horrible black fine powder and was called “Blend 43” and the word “espresso” was just a fancy word that people who had [...]
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I received an email flyer from an e-commerce store flogging home espresso machines late last week. Its rather eye-catching heading read “All I Want for Christmas is my Damn Coffee!” Now, I usually delete anything that even remotely resembles annoying spam but on this occasion I spared it from being ejected into the bottomless chamber [...]
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So how do you actually adjust your coffee grinder? We’ve spoken in previous podcasts about why a grinder is critical to making great coffee and when and how often you should adjust your grinder. This podcast puts the finishing touch on our grinder podcast series. Not to be missed, this is what will lift you [...]
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On July 29, 2008, Starbucks Australia shut stores nationwide to hold urgent discussions regarding the future of operations in Australia.
By July 30, the future plans for Starbucks in Australia were made public and the speculation was right. It had been no secret that Starbucks in the US had taken drastic moves to close hundreds of [...]
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Understanding the coffee grinder is paramount to making great espresso. Unfortunately 90% of commercial and home baristas have no idea of why. In this podcast, Matt Gee deals with when you should adjust your grinder and how often you will need to adjust your grinder. In our next podcast, we will deal with how you [...]
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We’ve discussed why a grinder is critical to making great coffee in a previous podcast. In this podcast Barista Brother, Matt Gee, delves into exactly which grinder to buy, depending on your budget and what type of espresso machine you have.
Enjoy!
Press play here to listen to podcast:
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