Coffee Appreciation

Oat and soya milk always curdles in my coffee, whether added cold or heated up.

Is there any way of avoiding this?

I've never had oatly barista curdle on me ever. which brand are you using? the alpro oat milk a cafe near my old office used was minging and did not work steamed at all.

Regular oatly / organic oatly / alpro soya.

Haven't managed to find oatly barista.

Soy milk curdles if the coffee is too hot, or if there's to much of the coffee oils in the coffee.

Workarounds are using different coffee, having cooler water, or extracting less.

That's quite a trade up. It's 10x the price! better make some damn good coffee.

my local sainsburys supermarket now does it and i've seen it in tesco and waitrose. you need to look in the long-life milk aisle as they tend to not put it in the chillers even if there's other oatly products in there as well.

I know. It was my 40th this year, so a bit of a pressie to myself.

I’ve been reading about this machine a lot though and should do me for at least another decade.

Had some lovely coffee in their shop in Mitte, Berlin.

Me too.
Just stopped going there as the people / vibe there is giving me headaches.

How you heat is key. All the other milks have acidity regulators added, this is as coffee is basically acidic, even if it doesn't taste that way.

The milks are pretty much alakline, hence the curdling, and the hightemps of steaming the milk has an impact, most likely by altering the nature of the proteins.

Anyway, Bonsoy is the best soy milk by miles, so try that. To get success with lighter coffees, try heating a little soy in a Bain Marie, then adding the Espresso to the preheated soy. This gentle heating helps emulsification, and avoids a lot of curdling. This should get it to 65deg, if you use boiling water for the Bain .

Then add a little steamed soy (lower than usual) to top up the drink.

We use this technique in the shop, and have no troubles making 6oz drinks curdle free.

Ooof. Paddle control looks fun!

That’s got everything, and in quite a small footprint.

Much better than those Rocket show ponies.

Sounds like a lot of work in a shop situation.. We had similar problems with steamed soy curdling on light espresso, solved by steaming the (cold) soy together with the shot.

The proper solution is to get everyone to switch to oat, Minor Figures is the shit.

Thanks, I'll try bonsoy and oatly barista.

Sounds like the problem is hot, strong coffee (French press) with light beans (Has Bean / YBCR).

Paddle control looks fun!

Doesn’t it? Really looking forward to playing with this and by all accounts it works brilliantly.

Just watched that video.

DAYUM.

Are you plumbing it in? I’ve had a plumbed machine before (runs off the mains into a filter first) and it’s so great.

You can also plumb a waste line out of the drip tray on some machines.

I’d really like to, but kitchen layout makes it tricky. It’s definitely on the to do list though.

Fuck that is lovely.

Agreed.

New (to me) roaster in Marsden w.yorks, these Panama Beans are good. Am told there's an El Salvador that is mind blowing too.

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So was thinking about this as I sipped on a takeaway coffee, from my uppercup. With the growing awareness of the need to recycle and reduce plastic waste and to be more eco friendly, was wondering why more coffee shops aren’t offering discounts/incentives to coffee drinkers to use reusable cups.
I know a couple that give you 20p off when you use one, but was wondering why that wasn’t standard practice, and why more don’t offer reusable cups for sale at the counter?
@StevePeel @Matisse do you guys know why this is the case, what’s the financial case for not doing it/doing it would be?
Is this something that the independent coffee shops start and then the larger chains take on, or vice versa?

And what’s an acceptable % of reusable cup to takeaway cup usage which actually helps the environment.

This is all based on the premise that takeaway cups and lids for them in most coffee shops aren’t recycled, I may be wrong in that assumption.

There was a motion a few months back (maybe last year actually), to put a charge on takeaway cups, as with plastic bags, but it was dismissed as Starbucks and Costa were seen to be "doing enough" with their discounts for bringing your own cup.

It's quite a big initial outlay for indy coffee shops to buy the stock of reusable cups and then the pressure of having to shift them too, when you're already working with a low margins. At the cafe I used to work in, I would incentivise purchasing a keep cup by giving people a free coffee when you purchased one, and then calculating the time before it paid for itself if you got 20p off per coffee, worked pretty well.

Takeaway cups are generally still considered such standard practice that many coffee shops don't even consider them as a cost to the business, because of the perceived loss of custom without them.

My 2 pence :)

edit you're not wrong. Most are un-recyclable, and the ones that are compostable currently need to be disposed of in separate waste to go to a commercial composting facility (this rarely happens), although this is changing and you may soon be able to put them in the garden/food waste bins.

Thanks really interesting, I remember hearing about the takeaway cup levy and it felt like a no brainer, as a way of incentivising customers to change their habits like the plastic bag charge..

I know in Dublin pretty much all coffee shops offer a discount if you bring in your own cup. A lot are using Vegware takeaway cups and lids now too which are fully compostable. My local coffee shops bean bags are nearly completely compostable too (they're still trying to source compostable ink for the labels)

The only negative I have heard is people bringing in dirty cups which could potentially contaminate the coffee station.

Vegware takeaway cups and lids now too which are fully compostable

I'm wondering what the timescale to compost is? I picked a load of these out of my compost after a year and they'd not decomposed much in that time. I stopped home composting them after that.

According to their website "12 weeks in a commercial composting setting". I think the problem is they might not make it there.