Yes, I know the contest is over. But *sigh* I'm trying to drink the cappuccino in question, and posting this is all that's keeping me sane.

I thought I knew soap bubbles . . .

Maybe I started out pessimistic, because I ordered a cappuccino. Actually, I ordered a double cappuccino, because I needed to justify an hour and a half of sitting using the internet. And the music was good. But when it comes down to it, it's a tea shop that serves coffee, and even that's stretching it.

I braced myself when I saw the Grindmaster with five settings labeled 'Perk', 'Press', 'Drip', 'Espresso', and 'Turkish'.

I ordered. Mostly, it would be wonderfully convenient for a great shop -- or even a passable one -- to be practically next door.

She reached for a box I hadn't seen before that moment.

She pulled out two foil envelopes.

I sighed, and thanked God I hadn't ordered a macchiato.

And if that wasn't bad enough, I soon realized that I thought I knew what dishsoap foam looked like. I was educated. These were BABs to end all BABs.

*sigh*

It's poetic, in a way, that I'm posting this imprecation from their connection, while trying to get three bucks worth of satisfaction out of ten ounces of milk-with-coffee-waved-over-it topped with a half-inch of soap bubbles.

If you like local art and a good cup of tea, by all means go to Pastel next time you're in Augusta. Otherwise, stay away!

sehrgut wrote:I braced myself when I saw the Grindmaster with five settings labeled 'Perk', 'Press', 'Drip', 'Espresso', and 'Turkish'.

There is a local coffeeshop here that will grind the coffees sold over the counter there (which are from a local hero roaster that does good work, but still won't roast-date anything smaller than a five pound bag) in one of those old grocery store Grindmasters. I think it's to punish those that want their espresso beans ground at the store instead of at the time of their conversion to liquid happiness.
But that's another story.

'Hands-Free' Espresso

OK, I said I'd help him move, but that's before I knew he was moving to Oklahoma. We were three days behind schedule on a two day (at most) drive before we even left the driveway. They'd closed I-10 from Tucson to El Paso. For snow. From Tucson to El Paso. FOR SNOW! This was unprecedented. In fact, most of the reason that it was closed was because no one had snow removal equipment anywhere in the vicinity of Tucson or El Paso, and there wasn't too much in between.
By the time we got to Las Cruces, it was freezing cold, and we'd been driving long and slow for many, many hours. We weren't used to ice, and it was way worse in a truck, and the heater wasn't doing it's job. It sucked.
The sign at the service station was like a beacon from heaven. "CAPPUCINO" in friendly neon letters. In the middle of the night, in the middle of nowhere, halfway between nowhere and nowhere else. Mind you, this was back when superautos were a rumour in my neighborhood, and we hadn't even heard about the 'cappucino' and 'mocha' machines in convenience stores.
I took one look at that thing and decided I had been screwed. My buddy said, "Let's try it, how bad could it be?" He had helped me go in on our first machine in the office, because we knew just how bad it could be. Tucson had a glut on horrible espresso in them days. Well, he pushed the button, and the thing rattled and hummed, and whirred and clicked, and regurgitated the nemesis of Satan into a styro cup. I immediately grabbed the face of the machine, and tugged, and it was like pulling the curtain back to reveal the 'wizard' from Omaha. Inside was a hopper full of brown powder, poised precariously over a funnel. Into the funnel ran a copper tube from a thermoblock. When the button was pushed, the hopper ws agitated by a motor driven cam, shaking powder into the funnel, and then hot water was shot out of the thermoblock into the side of the funnel, stirring the powder into brown dreck using the twin demons, coriolis effect and centrifugal force. I threw up in the back of my throat a little, and headed out to the refreshing nip of the ten degree weather. On the way out, the guy behind the counter says, "You're a technical guy, and your bud's an artist or something, hunh?" We confess that he's correct, I'm a sound engineer, and my bud is an actor/scenic designer. "Yeah, I could tell. He tried the cappuccino, you tore into the guts to see how it worked."
I did taste it, and it tasted worse than you'd expect. Set me off 'hands-free' espresso for the rest of my life.

I have to share mine, I know this thread is kinda old...but New York City never manages to disappoint in the Espresso Worst Case Scenario wars.

The Five Second Espresso

In Astoria, Queens, at a new "coffeehouse" called Cafe Soleil or something like that, I ordered an Iced Americano. The barista takes a dirty portafilter, knocks out the old (OLD) grounds, and walks over to a bowl on the counter where they were keeping the preground coffee that they had ground in their Bunn grinder, the kind you use in the supermarket. He takes one or two small scoops, dumps them into the portafilter, and without distributing OR tamping, thrusts it into the automatic espresso machine and presses the double button. Five seconds later, the shot is done. Meanwhile, the guy has prepared a to-go cup with some ice, and goes over to the espresso machine and attempts to put hot water from the dispenser into the ice--I had to intervene at this point. So, he puts cold water into the cup as instructed, dumps in the espresso, and has room left over. So what does he do? Presses the double button on the espresso machine AGAIN, over the used improperly ground and packed spent puck that just produced a five second shot. This one comes out in, oh, three seconds, and he dumps about half of it--it was tan colored--into my "iced americano" which at this point wasn't very cold. AMAZING. It tasted like a dirty rag had just been wrung out directly into my mouth.

tweeek wrote:And I have never seen so many grinds in a cup, I'm actually very curious as to how they got there, they were big so that partly explained the pour. I poured the cup out and they covered the bottom about 2 mm deep.

I wonder if they don't know to use a basket, and just put the grounds into the portafilter with no basket? That would be a new one on me!

Well, actually had a pretty bad one this evening at a place called Higher Grounds. Catchy huh? One son and I had just had dinner, and walked over to this place for a cap to it. I just got my first espresso machine recently, and I'd been telling him of my learning curve. We sat down with a double each. Watched the gal pull it; no tamp, auto machine. A little weak crema on top, pretty bitter... Told the son this was a sink shot. He asked what that was. I told him. He laughed and said it was pretty good compared to the Starbucks he hits on his business travels. I told him he needs to come up to the house and I'd see if I could get one right for him.