Coffee & Kimchi

February 15, 2012 8:01 am

How do you Americano

Americano has been on our menu as long as we can remember. Without a doubt, recent push to promote manual filter brewing has caught the customers attention, and more people are becoming aware and open minded of this new way to brew tasty coffee.
Still, Americano is a popular choice between customers- specially in recent cold weather conditions.

Throughout the day, we(hopefully) check our dose, time and yield and taste countless of shots to see if the coffee is tasting good. Embarrassingly, what I’ve noticed is that, I invest so much time dialing in filter coffee and espresso, but don’t really taste americanos.
The excuse maybe that, its too hot to taste and its not tasty, but being a drink which is quite popular, bringing money to the till, I think I or We have been turning blind eye on this drink.

Some people say if you weigh every shot, including americano, it should be fine. I know some shops who does that, I’m not saying I never weigh my shots for americano but what I found is that, with our coffee-

Type of coffee Dose(g) Time(s) Yield(g)
Espresso 17g 29s 31g
Americano 18g 31s 33g

Tasted the best, a 31g of shot of espresso which tasted good itself, can’t give you the same satisfying result when you further add 4oz of hot water or steamed milk, there should be different recipe for different types of drink.
When I tasted the americano with the shots which tasted good as espresso, It was very watery and just acidic, I know these results vary hugely on the coffee the shops use but even tasting Americanos from other shops, I know there are room for improvements.

I just wanted to share this to ask if any of you guys have a different method for pulling espressos for americanos, even though It’s a drink which gets no attention in the specialty industry, I want to make sure the 70~80 people who buys americanos from our shop gets the same tasty drink, and more attention from us making their drink as much as the espressos we pull.

Comments are welcome

5 notes Filed under:  Americano, sang ho park, barista, coffee, london, koreanbarista, korean barista, espresso, hasbean, squaremile, 박상호, 런던 바리스타, 아메리카노, Black coffee, sang ho,.

February 8, 2012 12:44 am

Tasty stale coffee.

One of the many joys working in the coffee industry, is trying endless amount of different coffees, in season being offered. For a year, I was subscribed to weekly and monthly coffee subscription from 2 of my favorite roastery. I’ve learnt so much by tasting different coffees itself, but what I was left with was countless amount of bags of half finished or even some unopened bags. I’m sure we all had this, but I want to focus on our customers, who buy these freshly roasted coffees from our shops.

Recently there has been substantial interest in manual filter brewing method from the customers, and beans have been flying off the shelves. If the beans were roasted on 1st of February, if FedEX does there jobs properly, it could be on the shop shelves on the 3rd of February. Now, we say that coffees taste the best when its ‘fresh’, where generally it is between 2nd day of roasting to 14th day of roasting. Now, I’m not saying it will suddenly taste horrible after 14 days, it will have so much factors affecting this, such as type of coffee, level of roast and also storage. Don’t we all agree that you can drink milk 2~3 days after its best before by dates if they are refrigerated well? Same goes for eggs and many other product.

So customers have generally, 10~12days window to enjoy their coffee whilst its fresh, if its a 250g bag thats around 21g~ 25g of coffee being consumed every day to enjoy them whilst its fresh. Presonally, if you don’t drink coff