Coffee Critic

Oh, the Coffee Academy has much to answer for. Now I’m an instant expert and judge. I was bumming around Albert Park yesterday with the baby, waiting while the eldest child was at cheerleading practice. Ordered a takeaway flat white at Laurent café in Albert Park Village. Woman a) didn’t flush the heads before making my coffee (a no no, it means there’s dud bits of coffee etc still in the head from the last coffee; and b) she barely tamped the coffee in. She used the preset buttons, so there would have been the right amount of water going through, but there’s no way with the coffee that loose it would have extracted correctly. Which explains why my coffee tasted weak. And this is supposedly an upmarket (well the prices are upmarket) café in an extremely upmarket part of town.

Possible premises

Interesting development today. Walking up the street, noticed a sign for lease on the window of the old coin laundry. The laundry closed a couple of months ago, there was a sign thanking customers for their business over the past 25 years, and explaining the building had been sold.

Now there’s a sign with a phone number to call about leasing – so I rang. We could get excited about this space. It’s reasonably large, but most importantly it’s immediately adjacent to the school crossing over to the local state primary school (where our son attends). Plus round the corner from the local Catholic primary school.

All those mothers dropping children off in the morning… and we have a ready made audience of a couple of dozen – the mother’s from our son’s class. It reignites the ideas we had about school lunch bags that we first talked about when we looked at the shop on Fitzroy Street a couple of months ago, opposite St Kilda Park Primary.

Finally there’s no immediate competition. There are other cafes around, but they’re further away up and down the street. We’d own the strip in front of school (albeit shared with the next door pizza/pasta restaurant, but they’re a different proposition and only open at night).

Coffee Culture

Off to town on the train again this morning, again to William Angliss, but this time something a bit more fun – ABC of Espresso at the Coffee Academy. Yup, Melbourne’s clearly the home of coffee culture – because there’s a training institute (well, a part of a building at William Angliss).

Our trainer Melissa clearly has plenty of years making coffee. And it shows, starting from when we walked in and she offered us a cup of coffee. Problem is, it was perfectly made, which meant our, I suspect desultory efforts later paled into insignificance. But it set the tone – it showed she really CAN make a seriously good coffee, and gave us a benchmark we need to try and match. Melissa’s also a judge for the Australian Barista Championships.

Just a morning’s course, but full one, racing through how to prepare the machine, make a coffee, texture the milk – then clean up your machine and equipment afterwards.

Believe it or not William Angliss runs an entire full on coffee course – Prepare and Serve Espresso Coffee is a nationally accredited unit of competency, with theory and practical. There’s even a course on Milk Texturing and Coffee Art – all those pretty squiggles on the top of your latte!

It was my first time working an espresso machine in anger. And now I understand why so many people call coffee an art. It ain’t as easy as it looks. The other problem is, thanks to Melissa, I know a bunch of things many coffee makers do wrong.

There’s a whole world of coffee out there. Check out coffeesnobs.com.au for example. That’s where I discovered you can download software to your computer to monitor your coffee roasting process (you DO roast your own beans at home don’t you). You hook a thermometer to your PC, and stick it into the coffee roaster. It then monitors and reports the roasting process. Cool. Coffee Geeks, my type of people.

Learning how not to serve the drunks

Off on the train this morning to town for a day’s training – Responsible Serving of Alcohol, plus Licencees First Step. RSA is the basic course that bar staff do so as to know how not to serve someone who is pissed. Well, that’s kinda the crux. It’s only a mandatory requirement for people who serve alcohol in a couple of specific circumstances – late night opening being one of them.

I guess it’s a way of trying to ensure that bar staff at the all night places know when to stop pouring drinks down the throat of some suburban blow in to the CBD, who’s likely to kick up trouble once he’s had a few too many. I’m not sure the plan’s working given the highly visible problems in town in recent months.

But the RSA is in general pretty useful, and seems to me everyone serving alcohol should do it. Our trainer Rob is an ex-copper who used to run the police licencing unit in town – which means he was at the pointy end when they cleaned up King Street in the 90s. It was a good session, Rob’s a good, practical to the point sort of trainer, who uses a fount of anecdotes and knowledge to powerfully illustrate how serving alcohol irresponsibly is potentially significantly detrimentral to your business.

The afternoon session, First Step, is designed (and a requirement) for people applying for a Liquor License. It’s a quick skim over the legislation, understanding how licensing works, common offences, signage and so on. Again Rob led the group, covering plenty of ground, but still leaving time for discussions and questions.

Oh, and now I know there’s a difference between ‘intoxicated’ and ‘drunk’. Apart from three Bacardi breezers…

A long day, but well worthwhile.