I confess; I’m not a coffee drinker. In fact, I dislike beverages that are hot and scald my tongue. Hand me a luscious cold coffee though and I’m sold. But as I walk into the Lavazza Training Centre in Ekkaduthangal, I’m intrigued. I’ll be undergoing their barista training module with head trainer Abdul Shahid Khan.
Turns out the optimum temperature of milk for a perfect cup of coffee is only around 76-78 degrees. “Not the boiling point that most of us prefer,” says Shahid. A little online research leads me to a host of forums discussing exactly this; with one Coffee Snob user saying, “I couldnt think of anything more unappealing than to take a sip of a drink that will ultimately burn my lips, tongue and peel the roof off of my mouth.”
“Heating milk beyond the optimum temperature changes the flavour profile too,” Shahid explains, as he encourages me to take a sip of the latte he’s just made. It doesn’t scald!
But wait. There are more coffee tricks Shahid has up his sleeve for someone like me who doesn’t exactly go moony over a hot beverage. For starters, he proceeds to make me a batch of delectable coffee caviar. Say what? You read it right. All it takes is some good quality espresso, sugar and a thickening agent. The Lavazza guys have made a dropper with 120 outlets into which the coffee mixture is pumped using air pressure with a regular syringe. The caviar is dropped into a cold water bath before being run through another cold water bath to form the jelly like spheres. The coffee caviar pops on your tongue with a slight sweetness accompanied by a burst of espresso. Perfect to be eaten as is or used on desserts such as tiramisu, coffee caviar is soon becoming my favourite.
Around this time Silvio Zaccareo, MD, Lavazza India, enters, looking for his share of caviar. “I’m Italian, I love my coffee. I usually prefer an espresso; no milk no sugar. Basically, if the coffee is good you don’t need anything to camouflage the taste,” he says, adding, “We started this training centre in August last year and I believe we’re the first such centre by a major coffee player here in India. It’s a great way to start engaging with the market. India has been a predominantly tea drinking market, with the South preferring their filter coffee. But things are changing and today we can talk about quality coffee. At the training centre, we customise sessions as per the client’s needs; from coffee designs to coffee machines we cover a pretty large spectrum.”
Up next is a coffee mocktail. “For a cocktail, we’d have to be further away from the highway,” he jokes as he sets about making a Shakerato. Plenty of ice cubes in a cocktail shaker, topped with a couple of shots of freshly brewed espresso, a dash of caramello and good shake after, the refreshing mocktail is served in cinnamon sugar rimmed martini glasses. “Caramello tastes a bit like rum, so…” he smiles.
At the barista training session at Lavazza — this happens to be the first full fledged training centre in India, with a second smaller centre in Mumbai — Shahid walks students through the nitty gritties of selecting the right bean and identifying flavour profiles. The most important thing for any barista is to understand the flavour profiles of various coffee beans he says. So, today we’re going to be working with three different types of beans — gusto crema (a blend of robusta and arabica from India); tierra (single origin from Brazil); and oro aroma (some of the finest double roasted beans from India). “Indian beans are less acidic than Colombian and Brazilian ones. The flavour of the coffee has a lot to do with the soil quality and sea level. Indian beans are perfect for coffee with milk. If it’s an espresso or Americano you are looking for then opt for Brazilian and Colombian beans,” says Shahid.
We proceed to measure out exactly 14 grams of beans of each variety that are coarsely ground and placed in three separate glasses. We pour 200 ml hot water into each glass and let the beans brew for a couple of minutes. “Now, take a bit of the brew with a spoon and slurp it in,” says Shahid. I take a tentative sip. “No, you’ve got to slurp it. That is when you’ll understand the flavour profile of each of the beans. This will in turn, help you decide what the bean can be best used for.” This process is called cupping.
Each of the beans has a distinct flavour — while oro aroma is slightly fruity, tierra is nutty and acidic while the gusto crema has an earthy flavour due to the mix of robusta.
Next, we brew some espresso. “Good espresso takes about 18-20 seconds to brew and should fall like hot honey,” says Shahid, before going on to guide us through making cappuccinos and lattes.
