Less milk in your flat white??

psjm

Has anybody noticed this trend lately in their coffee?  You get the coffee strength you ask for, but somehow it's more watery with less milk.
Is this another brilliant money-making idea doing the rounds? Save money and flavour by skimping on milk?

It's painful to have to ask at every cafe/take away place - how strong is your coffee?  Do you put an average amount of milk or are you putting less in it these days to save a few cents?  I may just save myself the trouble and only drink tea.

mycuppa

The more milk used, the less coffee flavor will be present in the cup. Milk dilutes the acidity of coffee and you end up with a weaker cup - not necessarily a watery cup. The only ways it ends up watery is if they are not producing the espresso part correctly, or they are not texturing the milk with a silky microfoam or the roasted coffee itself is under-developed and lacks body. It's possible the cafe may be needing to compensate for an inadequacy in the supplied products they have to work with - mostly, mandated by a contract they have entered into, or their staff may not be skilled. Perhaps it's not always about money as there could be many factors at play. 1. The outlet's customers may be regularly asking for a strong, or stronger flavored coffee which can be irritating at the cafe level as it is a fickle and abstract point, but real and valid. One cafe I know of where the customers constantly ask for "ball-breaking" coffee, e.g. multiple shots. Their customer base are typically tradies and industrial area take-away. Customer takes the prepared beverage then proceeds to tip in a few sugar satchels.......which it does not need, but the sugar is the reason the customer is telling the cafe owner to make it "stronger". The same coffee blend used in a shopping centre and the operators have it setup to split-shot, ristretto cut short-style because they want a rich, smooth and creamy coffee with half a litre of milk - or a coffee milkshake as it is sometimes referred to. 1/2 strength, super-hot with extra foam please is the most common order. These customer preferences are poles apart - so how does the cafe standardize and achieve higher levels of product consistency ? 2. The milk being used by the cafe matters. Some of my customers are using Organic or Bio-Dynamic milk and it's very strong milk, e.g. it can over-power the coffee. Even the low-fat versions of these milks are way creamier than the normal full-cream mass-produced milks. Ratios are important - balance is key and getting the right recipe that the majority of a cafe's coffee drinkers prefer can be almost impossible - too strong, too weak, too hot, too cold, not enough foam.........round and around it goes - everyone has an opinion. 3. It's rather pointless asking a cafe how strong their coffee is.......compared to what ? last week, last month, the place across the road, how you last made it at home..........coffee strength is a personal metric and can't be universally similar between coffee drinkers. 4. Another point to keep in mind is that the cafe industry is pretty much a knife-edge financial basket case - too many outlets competing for the same number of customers, escalating rents in most capital cities, high labor costs, unprofitable food segments and the price of a coffee cup barely rises in 12 years. Based on standard COLA/CPI, etc. consumers should be paying over $6.50 per cup for a small coffee if the natural laws of product pricing were able to be implemented. It's astonishing that a company like Coca Cola in Australia can revise product pricing/sizing every 3 months and yet cafes are fighting with 1 hand tied behind their backs.

LeroyC

Spot on 'mycuppa'. An interesting story - I was out for lunch at a cafe/restaurant recently. All orders were placed at the counter and I ended up waiting for a while behind a big group. Not a problem, it gave me time to watch some coffees being made. They had the basics right, good quality equipment (Mazzer grinder, Magister 3 group volumetric machine, coffee from a reputable roaster), so I thought the coffee would be good and was planning on ordering one. That was until I saw one being made. The 'barista' looked like she knew what she was doing. She ground fresh into the doser of the SJ of Major, I can't remember what it was; dosed and tamped with good looking technique then put the PF in place and pushed one of the preset buttons. The extraction went like this - 3 or 4 seconds from pump activation with no flow followed by 6 or 7 seconds of very fast flow. And that was it!! She watched it while she was steaming milk and I thought she might make adjustments, but every coffee she made went like this. WTF?!! $5-6 for that?!! No thanks.

FreshCoffee2

Well yeah, it just goes to exemplify yet again that providing the "theatre" of coffee making and all that involves (including spending mega bucks on "politically correct" equipment), will atleast at first get people in but is not a guarantee of a good coffee. For the rest of it. Good question/s  , and I would like to add to Jeffs informative post with a slightly different perspective: "Has anybody noticed this trend lately in their coffee"?  For mine, there is no such new "trend" happening. If anything, it is the well established practice of take away shops and and old style cafes OR old style cafe people that are not keeping up with what is happening in coffee land. That is: same size or larger cup than standard, flow more water through the grinds (OVEREXTRACT and make bitter), add less milk, ergo filling cup but with a different ratio of coffee to milk than should be used...end up with BITTER brew, shoot themselves in the foot and sell less coffee (its a dangerous circle to get involved in  ) The trend in some of the better quality cafes has been to use smaller cups, because those cafe people have become better educated and instead of trying to offer "value for money" or oneupsmanship on nearby cafes (by putting out larger cups of coffee for the same price), they have finally realised that quality is better than quantity in terms of espresso based brews, and in terms of quality for espresso, less is more. Larger than correct size cups with more volume = more milky or bitter coffee, if using no more than standard dose filters and splitting the shots (ie this is dependent on individual barista expertise and technique). "You get the coffee strength you ask for, but somehow it's more watery with less milk". *Strength* is an elusive and often MISunderstood concept in espresso. The better brewed an espresso is, the ***smoother*** it will be on the palate and so it will taste *less* strong, despite that if properly brewed, it is at full strength (dependent on the type of coffee being used). On the other hand for any given coffee origin, a badly made espresso will often taste ***strong*** but NOT in a good way. It will usually have to do with grind setting being too coarse, OR too much water brewed through the grinds (called over extraction). Strong but crap / bitter flavour. Fix up the mistakes, and the coffee smoothes out. The turns the concept of "strength" in terms of *flavour* or character on the palate...upside down. There really is no point asking about strength, if you dont know what the regular coffee is like. Once you know that, if you want more strength, ask for a double shot. That does NOT mean double volume espresso brew in the same cup. It means double the grinds, same size brew in cup, upping the strength for a given volume. "Is this another brilliant money-making idea doing the rounds? Save money and flavour by skimping on milk?" As stated earlier this is a well established practice in take away shops and old style cafes so I dont think this is a cynical new idea doing the rounds. Besides, to deliberately sabotage the character of your brews in this day and age (ie "take away" style brew) is to lose clients so saving a few cents per cup isnt a brilliant idea, rather, a pretty stoopid idea, and is why most take away or older style cafes dont do much coffee... "It's painful to have to ask at every cafe/take away place - how strong is your coffee?  Do you put an average amount of milk or are you putting less in it these days to save a few cents?  I may just save myself the trouble and only drink tea." "How strong is your coffee"... Refer my previous comments.  Stronger than what? What is it relative to? What is an "average" amount of milk? Not to mention that it's a question that will get the cafe staff off side or confused straight up, because they dont know what to tell you...their coffee is what it is....you wont know how strong or how good (or not) THEIR brew is until you buy one. Only after that, can anyone try to make an observation on what their coffee is like... They dont know how their coffee compares to anyone elses...what cafe, using what coffee supply, and what brewing technique? Its not relevant. What is relevant is...."is the coffee good"? If so the concept of strength by itself is out the window. I would say, it is better to frequent places that are more likely to serve a better made product  If that means steering clear of base grade cafes and take away shops, then that is probably a good idea. All of the above assumes cafes using standard sized coffee filters. Once you deviate to cafes using nakeds OR nakeds with triple filters, its another  ball park again... And lastly....nothing wrong with a well made cup of good quality tea. Hope that helps 

Kevohere

on 1468199009:

"It's painful to have to ask at every cafe/take away place - how strong is your coffee? If that means steering clear of base grade cafes and take away shops, then that is probably a good idea.

It's not only 'painful', but a total waste of time as you have clearly pointed out FC. Similarly, asking a barista "do you make a good coffee?"  :doh: They're sure as hell gonna tell you what you want to hear to get a sale. Clearly, steering clear of base grade cafes and takeaways (and I'll include pub/club bistros here) is good advice. On the odd occasion I have to drop into an unknown coffee shop, I like to casually view the barista's technique and equipment before ordering. And if it (the coffee) happens to turn out "ordinary", give honest feedback if asked, otherwise, accept and acknowledge that is what is served here and move on. As you say "it is better to frequent places that are more likely to serve a better made product". Good advice from your usual high standard informative post FC.  :thumb:

Brett H

Agreed!  Thank you FC ang MC!!!

FreshCoffee2

Thanks guys, always appreciate your feedback and comments