The Art and Craft of Coffee (24 page)

Add Cream to Your Coffee or Coffee to Your Cream?

This age old controversy actually has a scientific answer. Add cream to your cup and then pour in the coffee. Why? The combined mass of cream and coffee together loses energy to the surrounds, which lowers its temperature. The hotter the initial temperature, the faster the drink loses energy. The temperature starts lower when the cream enters the cup first, so the drink loses energy slower. This means the coffee will keep its heat longer.

Coffee additions: Cream in a pitcher, sugar in a bowl, flavors in shot glasses. Are they ingredients or adulterants? Sugar has been added to coffee virtually since the discovery. Milk has been added since its introduction to Europe.

Sugar and Milk: Coffee’s Complements or Nemeses?

Sugar

Sugar’s popularity in coffee stems from the syrupy viscosity it creates as it melts. No artificial sweeteners offer this change. Natural cane sugar tastes best. It has a low melting-point, absorbs fewer extraneous and undesirable odors, and blends easily. An oft-cited industry-circulated story about U.S. coffee drinkers suggests that sugar use rivals milk use in its popularity in the United States. But coffee connoisseurs remain divided about its use.

Some say that coffee itself is sweet enough and that sugar simply adulterates the drink. Others claim that coffee should be enjoyed sweetened and lightened to taste, stating that it’s no different than putting a good sauce on fish. I say do what your taste buds desire. Don’t drink your coffee to please anyone but you.

You do have other choices of sweetener besides sugar. In coffee terms, all sweeteners—including sugar—are artificial because coffee itself has some natural sugars. Here are a few of the most popular sweeteners:

Aspartame

After a study showed a possible link between sodium saccharin and cancer, aspartame came on the scene. It not only seemed completely safe, but it didn’t have any bitter aftertaste, which some saccharin users reported. This made it ideal for coffee.

To this day, it is highly regarded as a sugar substitute, although some studies claim the body can convert it to ethanol, making it potentially dangerous in high amounts. (This controversy, as all others, is beyond the scope of this book.) Aspartame doesn’t work well for baking because it loses heat—not of concern to the relatively short heat cycle of brewed coffee.

Sucralose

After controversial research predicted that aspartame, when ingested in large quantities, can turn into ethanol, sweetener users sought a more natural alternative. Sucralose, better known as Splenda, came out first. It has won vast marketplace acceptance for being “made from sugar,” although it has not yet displaced aspartame. It has its own fans and detractors. Critics claim it is no longer natural in its final form.

Stevia

Stevia has seemingly everything going for it. It is natural, made from a leaf, and even has roots in ancient third-world cultures. However, minimal research has been done on it, and it currently has relatively small market penetration. To its fans, it seems perfect. Its detractors claim it hasn’t been scrutinized enough. As a sweetener, some coffee drinkers claim it does not sweeten coffee as do sugar or other alternatives.

Sodium saccharin

Sodium saccharin has been around since the 1870s. It gained popularity during World War I when sugar was in short supply, but it really hit its stride during the 1960s when dieting became all the rage. After a death blow from a highly publicized study linking sodium saccharin to cancer in rats, it quickly lost its reputation, was superseded by aspartame, and is now cheap. Interestingly, though, no one seems to fear it any more. As a coffee sweetener, it is not popular because of its bitter, metallic aftertaste.

Milk

There’s a theory that France had a better coffee reputation than England purely due to its more plentiful, richer milk. At least that was the case during the 1700s. Today, the world’s largest coffee chains spend more money on milk than on coffee.

So which milk complements coffee the best? For brewed, filtered coffee, experts say cream with higher fat content, sometimes called 18 percent cream, light cream, or coffee cream taste best. Milk—even whole milk—has considerably less fat content, so you need more of it to deliver the same taste combination. Soy milk acts similarly to whole milk. Non-dairy coffee creamers, with their high sodium content, were designed to counteract the taste of harsh, cheaper Robusta coffee.

Espresso milk-based beverages, such as cappuccinos and lattes, taste best when made with rich, full-fat milk. In these drinks, choice of milk improves more than just flavor. Milk’s fat actually causes it to stretch during frothing and allows it to reach the best consistency, a great virtue in cappuccinos and lattes.

No sodium citrate

Find 18 percent cream without sodium citrate (examine the ingredients list). This ingredient neutralizes acid. You may have to contact a local dairy—and you won’t believe the taste difference.

Flavored Coffee

Sugar, sweeteners, and milk aren’t the only coffee additives. The flavored coffee age as we know it began in the 1960s when instant coffees producers began adding artificial flavors such as vanilla and hazelnut to their drinks. But actually, flavoring coffee goes back much further in history.

To stretch coffee quantities, some people blended coffee with a variety of grains. The major U.S. coffee port city of New Orleans, for example, popularized chicory-flavored coffee, made by adding to the drink a slightly bitter tree bark.

Roasting companies have successfully added hazelnut, vanilla, and chocolate to their coffees. In the 1980s, many a specialty coffee bean shops smelled predominantly like hazelnut, not coffee, which shows hazelnut’s influence and popularity as a coffee flavor additive.

These flavorings can be natural or artificial. They typically get added after roasting by tossing the beans in a cylinder with syrups. The flavoring then coats the still-hot beans, which can sometimes appear glossy in the final product.

I recommend adding flavors at home. If you know you enjoy just one type of flavored coffee, consider coffees flavored by your roaster. Just know that your grinder and brewing equipment will likely take on the tastes and aromas of that flavor. Some grocery stores have two grinders, one for flavored and the other for unflavored, to address this issue.

Steaming and Frothing Milk

Perfectly frothed and steamed milk for espressos is as important as a perfect shot. Even the most die-hard purist can’t resist the taste and viscosity of a perfectly made cappuccino. I purposefully separated this section from the espresso because it’s a different art form. I also chose to focus on drinks that anyone with a good home espresso machine could make. Though a commercial machine may feature a more powerful steam wand, a home machine can produce frothed and steamed milk that’s just as good. I fully expect to be wowed by the drinks you make after just a few practice runs.

Latte Steaming and Frothing Tutorial

A latte requires steamed milk, but little or no foam. The goal is to time your steam wand’s rise to the milk’s surface so that the milk is hot, rich, and creamy all at the same time. With practice (using the steps below), you will achieve this every time.

Not everyone wants foam. To reduce or minimize foam, rap the milk pitcher on a tabletop or other hard surface every once in awhile as you keep the steam wand submerged.

Materials

These materials work for frothing and steaming milk for cappuccinos and lattes. We will not repeat them in the cappuccino or macchiato tutorials.

Chilled stainless steel pitcher

Milk, any kind, from non-fat to half and half, though whole milk offers the best results Espresso machine set to “steaming/frothing” setting

Spoon, optional

Damp towel

1-ounce (30 ml) shot of espresso

ATTENTION SINGLE BOILER ESPRESSO MACHINE OWNERS

If you have a single boiler machine, you may want to froth and steam milk
before
making your espresso shots. This type of machine has a one-bto two-minute delay when switching from coffee making to milk frothing to let the boiler come up to temperature.

< A café latte is the most popular of all milk-based espresso drinks. The steamed milk is key, although the foam on top offers an important visual impact and texture.

A MISTAKE TO AVOID

This photo demonstrates a common mistake. Bobbing the pitcher up and down by steaming/frothing will result in oversized bubbles. This also happens when the wand comes fully out of the milk and steam shoots down from above. The goal is dense creamy foam, not loose bubbles.

Instructions

1.
Fill the pitcher with milk no more than half way to leave room for expansion
(a)
.

2.
Place the pitcher under the steam wand. Fully submerge wand’s tip and bring it near to pitcher’s bottom.

3.
Turn steam on full power.

4.
Lower the pitcher slowly. Stop when the wand’s tip sits just under the milk’s surface
(b)
. When steam is on, never remove the wand completely from the milk.

5.
If you desire foam, hold the wand tip just under the milk’s surface. Keep your hand on the pitcher. If the milk takes a long time to heat up, push the wand’s tip back down near the pitcher’s bottom. This will allow you to finish heating the milk without excessive frothing. Once the pitcher is almost too hot to hold, you are finished steaming.