hk31 said:
i've tried a few places...
but i'm the worst food taster....i can't distinguish between which coffee is good and which one is not...
how do you know when you've just had GOOD coffee?!
well first off the coffee bean must suit ur taste. i personally like strong coffee hence strong/dark roast is better than mild roast for me.
when u actually put the beans thru machine and a flow of coffee comes out, a good cup of coffee is distinguished by this foamy cicrcle around the cup, that's known as da crema. u can see the crema even when milk is poured in, because there should be a dark circle of brown around the foam. the crema is basically the oil from the coffee beans, so if the coffee beans are not fresh, then the beans are dried up, and hence less crema.
when pplz descirbe the coffee as *watery* often its cuz the coffee beans are grinded too coarse, hence the water drips thru the cup handles fast. Most pplz think its cuz the coffee beans are bad, which is not the case.
another important feature of a good cup is the milk. Good fraoth does not have any air bubbles. The usual practice is to tap the milk jug after froathing to get rid of the air bubbles, but if ur good enough, u dont need to tap the jug cuz there wouldnt be ani air bubbles in the fraoth to start off with.
the froath must taste silky and smooth, not foamy with heapz of air bubbles. usually bad fraoth deflates after 1 minute. Furthermore, the froath should be adjusted according to what u order. eg: cuppacino has 1.5cm worth of fraoth, and when u froath it up, it needs higher presure than say latte, which only requires 1cm of froath. if u ordered a latte and they gave u heapz of froath, then its all wrong, cuz that then becomes a cuppacino not an latte.
i hope i didnt confuse u haha
