Ach, We Call It Coffee With Milk Around Here, Ya Latte Drinking Surrender Monkey

After many, many tries I think I am finally getting closer to figuring out “latte art” – making patterns on the surface of espresso crema with specially steamed milk. Here’s my best attempt to date:

It’s a weird hybrid of a rosetta and an apple.

To see much better examples of latte art, see this outstanding guide or just look over google’s results.

David Schomer has a commercial video for sale (which is terribly overpriced – $49.95 for 18 minutes), but fortunately there are a few free demonstrations out there.

I have to warn you, watching these is absolutely hypnotic :

http://www.coffeegeek.com/video/artigiano.mov
http://www.coffeegeek.com/tempphoto/sammy.mov
http://www.latteart.org/latteart.htm (click on “demo” for the movies).

Once I figure out the process completely I’ll post my own tutorial.

The Ultimate DIY

These days I own some very serious espresso equipment. I am pretty much set with espresso. But one thing is still missing from my kitchen, and that’s a commercial soda fountain.

I do not own a car, which is one of the reasons why I have time and money to purchase the abovementioned espresso equipment. Not having a car, I hate lugging soda bottles from the store , hate  running out of soda, hate having to drink warm soda because I forgot to put a few bottles into the fridge.  The solution is rather simple – build my own soda fountain. 

Indeed there are people crazy enough to put together soda fountains from parts bought on eBay.  I might have a better espresso machine, but this guy, for example, has a bar style soda gun right in his kitchen:

This setup is pretty sweet as well :

If you read the explanation from the link above, building your own from eBay parts is a long and messy process, although the price will stay under $1000. There’s a company that sells prereconfigured units, but that costs about 3K. Also all of the soda machines take up a lot of cabinet space, and some require a separate ice cube maker.

I don’t have the time, space or money to attempt a project like this now. But there’s a low rent / low tech alternative called Soda Club.  You have to chill bottles with water and then carbonate them in a small tabletop unit. I don’t know looks kind of similar to the iSi syphon and thus lame. Maybe I’ll try it.

Dead Programmer On Coffee

often tells me that I should move to Seattle. But there is one reason why I would actually want to move there. And that reason is Espresso Vivace.

You see, this dude Schomer served in the Army as a metrologist. No, not a meteorologist. A metrologist, a person who measures stuff for a living. When he became a civilian again he decided to apply some of his skills to making espresso.

Good espresso is very hard to make. It’s no secret, really. And it’s rather well known what you need to do to make good espresso. To oversimplify things you need:

a) very fresh, properly roasted high quality coffee beans
b) pure water with a certain degree of hardness
c) a good quality burr grinder with very fine grind adjustment
d) a La Marzocco espresso maker with perfectly adjusted for water temperature and pressure
e) a perfectly fitted espresso tamper (such as one made by Reg Barber)
f) a thick walled ceramic cup
and
g) a barrista who knows what he or she is doing.

Now, the barrista must be able to do the following things:
a) correctly adjust the grinder and grind enough beans for one shot. This is a tricky trial and error process – the grinder must be adjusted depending on ambient temperature and humidity.
b) fill the portafilter very evenly with the correct amount of coffee grinds and tamp them down with enough force
d) make sure that the group doesn’t have enough time to cool down
e) place the group into the machine and press the brew button, shutting it off after a correct period of time
f) judge the quality of the resulting espresso shot and throw it out and make a new one if it’s no good
g) keep the machine in immaculate state of cleanliness

All of these steps are important. David Schomer came up with a way to measure and reduce already small temperature fluctuations in La Marzocco machines. He also added extra cooling fans to his grinders to prevent coffee from heating up when ground. He custom made ergonomic perfectly fitted tampers. He measured, modified hardware and technique and then measured again, sharing his secrets with the world.

Right now I am between espresso machines. When my last machine gave up the ghost (word to the wise, don’t buy any consumer grade Nuova Simonelli machines. If they die, you won’t be able to get any service for them) I decided to get nothing other than a used single group La Marzocco. I can’t afford a new one as it costs around 6 grand, but used ones can be had for as little as $1000. One of the problems is of course that it uses 220V electricity, but I’d be willing to pay an electrician to install a 220V outlet for me. Of course some lucky bustard got an experimental 110V machine, but no such luck for me. Besides, I want the real thing. I am horribly tempted to get an ECM Giotto machine that comes recommended by Schomer himself though…

Nah, I don’t want to leave New York just because there no good espresso places here. It’s cheaper just to make my own. Or even one day I might open the real Dead Programmer’s Cafe here. Maybe if I find a partner..

This all kind of reminds me – I am all out of coffee beens. Time to order some more.

The Deadprogrammer Drinking Game.

The Deadprogrammer Drinking Game.

Drink one shot when:
* There is a picture with a blurry yellow cab in the background
* There is a picture of a NYC landmark
* I obsess about titanium
* I post a poll and it’s filled out by 5 and a half people (out of a hundred + “friends”)
* I write about Nathan’s Famous, iXL or working as an elevator operator
* There is a Simpsons reference
* I make a list (drink now)
* The article is recursive (ditto)
* I post a “howto” article about something that is probably useful, but too weird to try
* I recommend a book
* I recommend a livejournal user or community
* I mention
* There is a spelling or grammar error
* I write about NYPD
* There is an absolete technology article

Drink two shots when:
* I am pissed off (or piss off) very smart people from
* I gripe about espresso quality in NYC
* There is a post with more than 5 comments

Drink three shots when:
* It’s an article written during lunchtime

Chug when:
* The lunchtime article is written around 5PM

Titania-Mania

My Titanium fetish is well documented in my journal. Well, here’s more titanium stuff:

There’s this guy on an island off the coast of Canada who makes the best espresso machine tampers. A tamper is a little plunger that is used to pack coffee ground into a portafilter. Tamping is one of the most critical stages in making espresso. It’s almost impossible to get good espresso without proper tamping. In fact, I’ve never seen a barrista in New York do a proper tamp. The one reason why Starbucks coffee became more drinkable is because they use automatic machines these days that tamp the grounds themselves.

I don’t own a Reg Barber tamper because I already had and Ergo Packer, which is also very finely made and instead of having a flat bottom like all other professional tampers or rounded bottom like all the crappy ones, it has a very slightly curved one. “Very scientific!” would cry characters from this novel.

Anyway. Reg finally made a small batch of titanium tampers. Gotta get one.

Moving on. In the book “Skunk Works: A Personal Memoir of My Years at Lockheed”, Ben Rich mentioned a special set of titanium shot glasses that his boss used for drinking with the generals. You see, the awesom SR-71 Blackbird was the first plane made entirely out of titanium. I wonder who has those glasses now.

But these guys have excruciatingly pretty titanium stuff. Sake cups, mugs, beer glasses – all made out of titanium. Jewelry is also very nice.

They can even make a street sign out of titanium for ya.

You know, I don’t want a 1958 Plymouth Fury anymore. I don’t even want a 1948 Tucker Torpedo. All I want is a 1956 GM Firebird II, the first titanium body car with a gas turbine engine. Is that too much to ask for?

Thank You, Corporate Masters!

This is so amazingly cool. Ooooh.

Well, it turns out that the whole third floor of the Newscorp Building has been turned into the News Club which is open to the employees of all Newscorp companies. It consists of a number of conference rooms and classrooms, a gym and an espresso bar! They have a pretty decent superautomatic machine. The coffee is Moka D’oro (check out the logo on the site), which is no Espresso Vivache by a long shot. From packaged brands Illy and Lavazza are much better than it too. But it’s still a passable brand. And the barrista is keeping the machine very clean. And they serve espresso in porcelain cups. And it costs one dollar!!!

The gym is $5 a week. Woooo! I am joining.

See, and I was just complaining about how there was no club I could go to. News Club rocks! Laptop ports, papers from all over the world on the tables, view of Radio City Music Hall. I don’t want to go home to my dumpy apartment.

You know, those four espressos that I’ve had there today boosted my morale much better than Team Newscorp yacht.

The One True Way of Making Tea

I think that I know 95% of all there is to know about making an ideal espresso. I even know the only half-, nay, quarter-acceptable drink in Starbucks. “Cafe Americano” – espresso diluted with water. But I know next to nothing about making a good cup of tea.

I remember something I’ve read in Bros. Strugatskie’s novel about some really Zen way of boiling water for making tea, but I could not find any good references on the web. I did find two interesting links though:

A Nice Cup of Tea by George Orwell
and
Rec.food.drink.tea FAQ

Hmm. In Russia, a common method of making tea is to make a concentrated tea infusion in a small teapot and then dilute it with water. I still do this sometimes. But I think a better method is to take a big teapot and make tea of drinking concentration in it. I guess I’ll get a big teapot and try that.

New York in a Cup

I was always addicted to coffee. In the Soviet Union, a country of tea drinkers, brewed coffee was a rarity. The most commonly available coffee was instant, and even that slop was very scarce. I still remember the time when our distant relative from Australia sent us a big parcel, which among other things contained a humongous can of Folgers instant coffee. I was able to beg my mom to share it with me from time to time. Among the things in the parcel was a pair of extremely thick Levis jeans, but that’s another story. Oh, and that relative was a mayor of a small town in Australia. Also another story.

In any case, the first time I tasted non-instant and non-Turkish coffee was probably in the US. I continued drinking instant, sometimes with lemon ( coffee with lemon is mostly unheard of in the US). Then I learned that coffee could easily be purchased in bodegas 24 hours a day.

My tastes were becoming more and more refined. I purchased a cheapo steam powered espresso maker for $50 and learned the art of making espresso with. Even with the crappy equipment I was able to make half decent espresso and cappuccino once in a while.

After I purchased a semi-decent pump machine for $150 I stopped drinking drip coffee altogether. Then I purchased a semi-professional pump machine for $650. It was very nice, but broke after a few years of service. It’s possible to get service for commercial machines of that firm, but not for the consumer products. The machine sits in a box in my bedroom, and every night Tilde the cat mutilates it’s cardboard box. That is the punishment of the espresso gods for failure. Yeah.

Meanwhile I rediscovered the bodega (deli) coffee. Most bodegas have commercial Bunn brewers and grinders. The coffee is fresh.

There are a few coffee customs that are very specific to New York.

The first is that the expression “coffee, regular” refers to a small cup with sugar (usually two spoons) and milk. The second is the cup in question. Most frequently the cup is either a Sherri Cup Company “Anthora” design or one of it’s clones or relatives. If you’ve seen a film or a show about New York, you’ve seen this cup. It’s very very distinct. It’s blue and white, it features a Greek pattern and the words “we are happy to serve you”. The official name “Anthora” is a misspelling of “amphora”.

From http://www.caffmag.com/caffmag/features/grk_cup.html
“The design has been around since 1963,” said Wayne Meadowcroft, Sherri’s vice president of sales and marketing. “At the time, most of the diners and delis were Greek-owned, so the design, which was by an employee, Leslie Buck, was a natural.”

While ownership of diners has expanded to include other ethnic groups, the cups are not unique to Greek-owned restaurants. At Italian pizza shops, in Indian diners and Jewish delis, the cup of choice is almost always the same and can be found stacked high in plastic covering near the coffee pots.

This Leslie Buck must have felt like that woman who designed the mac icons.

In any case, there are variations of the “Anthora” design floating around. See the clone gallery here (it’s really worth a look. Clicky.)

Enema of the State

I am a caffeine aficionado. I mostly take it in form of espresso, but I don’t mind getting my daily allowance from regular coffee, soft drinks and/or caffeine tablets. I’ve been known to spike tea with caffeine. But recently I learned about two other methods which are probably taking it too far:

  • As it is well known, chemicals are absorbed very rapidly through the colon. I hear of coffee enemas being taken by celebrities like Janet Jackson. Treat depression, my ass. Huh, that actually makes sense :)
  • Caffeinated soap. I am actually thinking about trying this one. I am just not sure that it actually delivers 250 mg per shower and does not just contain that much.