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Who are Baristas?
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Espresso is an art form and a trade. Having the best equipment available will not guarantee a good product. In fact, a good barista working on a lesser machine is far more valuable than a poorly trained barista using a top of the line machine. Without having properly trained personnel who know how to use the equipment to its maximum potential would be an injustice to your business.
Espresso machines, grinders, tampers, mugs even the espresso coffee itself are all tools the barista uses to serve the customer. The barista is the heart of your business. They create the product being served to the customer and wish them a nice day. The barista is your business's representation. The customer always leaves an espresso bar with two impressions that stick out above all else, the coffee and the service. Without the barista they wouldn't receive either.
"It should have a glossy sheen to the surface, with a velvety texture." that is how a proffesional barista says describing the milk in a perfect latte. "And it should be just on hot - not so that the skin is hanging off the roof of your mouth." He can also detail the set of the grind ("it's better to have a good, hard pack in a slightly coarser ground"), why beans are ripe for roasting at two to three days old, why the coffee is best extracted within 40 minutes of the beans being ground and why espresso should pour in a thin 30-second stream.
Ah, coffee nirvana. It's so much more than 43-bean flavour these days. For someone this passion is part of a public fervour that has seen love of the aromatic bean take off.
It's the coffee that drives the billions. And it's the barista who makes the coffee. In Italy, barista means "barman" but the title also refers to a specialty coffee maker. Savvy cafe owners are realising that if customers know a maestro is behind the machine, they'll be back. Suddenly, the guy who makes the coffee has power.
All the top baristas are passionate about coffee - and a little crazy. "You need to have a bit of an obsessive-compulsive gene. You're doing it hundreds of times every day so to get satisfaction out of it, you need to have the kind of personality that is never satisfied. It's a perfectionist thing that makes you go, 'Yeah, that's good but how can we work on it?'"
One of the baristas says: "The espresso machine is becoming the new consumer item. Everyone's whacking them in their kitchen and going, 'Hang on. It doesn't taste as good as one from a cafe."
So they enrol at the espresso school, which runs a course three nights a week that's booked out four to six weeks in advance. Or they attend the Coffee Academy, which runs a Coffee at Home course for the general public alongside its classes aimed at cafe owners and baristas.
Today people have respect for a good Barista, as much as they would for someone who's producing fine wine."
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