We are supposed to help you just ask questions and we will explain anything to you and help you decide what you need.
I’ve drunk coffee (black no sugar) at Starbucks in Rhode Island and Starbucks in Manchester, UK.
At the first it was fine, in the second it was crap. Shouldn’t the product taste the same no matter where it’s served?
Just out of curiosity, how would you make a “Iced Venti No Water Americano”? Not the ingredients, obviously, but the technique. I ask because I frequent a few different locations and they seem to make it differently. One way is awesome (IMO) and the other way is so-so.
This is an excellent example of the complete unfamiliarity that Mangetout was describing.
“Upside down?” It’s coffee, so how can it be upside down? And you’re explaining it by referencing something called a machiatto? I have no clue what that is. “Pump of vanilla?” Vanilla what – ice cream? Liqueur?
When I go to Starbucks, I’m scared to get anything but a caffe latte or one of the grossly sweet seasonal drinks, like an eggnog latte.
Switching gears, does Starbucks have a good policy on fair trade for growers and environmentally friendly practices and so forth? I never know whether to feel guilty.
Oh, GOD no! I wouldn’t drink their burnt motor oil if it were free, which it’s anything but.
Okay, I am far from a Starbucks expert, but here’s a little help for Starbucks-phobes who want to branch out but are scared by the menu. I second the suggestion to go in at an off-peak time, because that way you won’t be stressed out by the pressure of the people standing behind you waiting for you to make up your mind.
First, sizes. You can get short (very small, aka kids’ size), tall (small), grande (medium), or venti (large). In my experience, if you order by saying “small”, “medium” or “large”, you will not be mocked or harassed, but you might be asked, “Did you mean the 16 oz size?” or whatever.
On to drinks. You can order plain coffee. Really, you can. Moving on from there, you can order espresso-based drinks. A latte is espresso and steamed milk. A cappuccino is espresso, steamed milk, and a whole bunch of froth. You can also have them put a shot of flavored syrup in your drink, or chocolate syrup, or caramel.
An americano is espresso and hot water.
You can also order just a plain steamed milk, with or without flavored syrup in it. I think this is called a “steamer” but I’m not sure. I get it for my kids sometimes.
Crazy stuff you might hear people order sometimes: “Upside down” means the espresso and whatever all else goes in the opposite order of the way it usually does. “Split shot” means half regular, half decaf. I would point out that while it is fine to use the Starbucks lingo if you are hip to it, it would also be perfectly fine to simply order “half regular, half decaf” as well. The way I know all of this stuff is that I asked the employees at Starbucks, and they told me, very politely and with no sneering in evidence.
I don’t know anything about macchiatos or frappucinos or whatever, because I don’t order them, but there have been some pretty good descriptions of what they are in this thread. And if I have screwed anything up, I am sure that one of our resident baristas can easily correct my info.
Well we have more then one coffee we brew. Each day its usually sometimes differnt so it could have been the coffee was different. I prefer Verona over other stuff.
Sounds odd, An Americano is supposed to have water in it. If i got that drink i would fill up the cup with all ice. Add shots, and fill it back up with ice since it would have melted some. That drink would actually be an iced espresso but in a Venti cup
IME as a former barista (not at Starbucks), they generally have no incentive to sell you anything, especially if their location/business is not in danger of going bottom-up, which any Starbucks location generally isn’t.
One of the many reasons I loathe Starbucks is that they took the term macchiato, which already referred to a delicious espresso drink (well, two, but we’ll cover that), and applied it to a completely different (and inferior) drink of their own invention.
At a decent coffeehouse, the word “macchiato” generally refers to a caffè macchiato (or espresso macchiato), literally “espresso marked” with milk: two shots of espresso with a small amount of steamed milk and a small spot of milk foam on top of the crema. A latte macchiato (“milk marked” with espresso) is pretty much the opposite. A Starbucks macchiato is some weird-ass thing that has to be put together in some super-specific way or the wannabe Seattlites will whine and stamp their feet. When I was asked to make one of those, I generally just tried to find someone else to make it, since I didn’t consider memorizing a competitor’s menu to be part of my job description. (I didn’t catch any flak for this, BTW.) Enough of my coworkers did that there was always someone else to make it.
I actually did try to memorize it for a while. It just didn’t come up often enough to cement it in my mind, and eventually I stopped trying to waste valuable brain cells on it.
Vanilla flavoring syrup. You know how Coke is flavored syrup and carbonated water? It’s like that, except it’s vanilla. Those tall bottles with the pumps on them near the espresso machine are the different flavoring syrups.
“Half caf” is also fine, as it’s generally the “industry” term outside of Starbucks IIRC.
That’s espresso on ice. An americano is just espresso and water, by definition. You’re going to get water in your drink either way, since the espresso will melt a pretty good portion of the ice.
I had some customers who preferred their americanos shaken. That will make the drink frothy, but it will also melt more of the ice because the hot espresso comes into direct contact with a larger total surface area of ice and thus transfers its heat energy to more of it.
Hmm the bored went down for a while dont think i missed anyone. Glad to see others are helping as well
Yes, that’s the way I like it, actually. I sometimes ask for just a splash of water on top right before they put on the lid. When they put the water in first it just tastes way too watered down.
Interesting answer. I do not know how this answered it. A “ristretto” is not all that faster than a regular shot. 5-8 less seconds or so. There are several aways of doing this depending on the equipment and school of thought. Adjusting the grind, tamp more firmly, or simply stopping the extraction early. I like the third way. It seems to me you are confusing a shot or a true “cafe” with ristretto or short pull.
This is my big beef with Starbucks. I drink only Drip, French Press or Shots. I may sound like a coffee snob but i will drink coffee from anywhere. I goto Startbucks and gas stations and true coffee shops with real baristas. What surprises me is the lack of real porcelain cups for a shot. Starbucks the king of espresso in America and probably extracts more shots than any 5 of its competitors yet can not produce a proper cup for a shot.
My question is are there any Starbucks that have a proper porcelain cup for drinking a shot. Not a horribly over sized paper cup. What a bout a proper demi? Are there any glasses in any Starbucks?
I worked at a coffee geeks type cafe K-Bay Caffee If you navigate the site you can see a picture of my bald headed self under cupping. Startbucks it seems is what makes people hate coffee snobs yet the proper tools are not even there to be snobby.
Am I wrong? Do you all time the shots? Do you even know how long a shot takes. Just the ambient temperature will effect shot time. If a shot for some reason takes a super long or short time will you all dump it? I have been to places and worked at a places that at least 10% of all shots were dumped. Can you hand tamp a shot if you wanted? I love an americano with the shot poured on the water. So as to preserve the creme. I like it even better pulled directly into the cup. 8oz. Is crema preservation talked about in training?
Are there real cups?
Do you all time shots? Can you? Do you ever throw shots out?
Navigate that link a bit. What percentage of that has anything to do with what Starbucks is about? I am not dogging Startbuck. I just want to know.
I know what these type of shops think of Starbucks. How does Startbuck think of these type of shops?
Thanks
Yes we do have small porcelain cups, all you gotta ask is for here. And the machines do make things a little quicker because we can Tell it that we need 6 shots and it will just pull one after the other. We can pull shots for drinks we don’t even have yet. Yes we do throw shots and dump many out when they go bad. So much that our manager thought we were giving out free drinks, because we dumped more then expected, and did not have money to account for all the beans we used. The machine does get calibrated regularly to make sure the shot comes out how it should.
An iced americano at Starbucks is made by first filling the cup with water to a specified line, then adding the shots to the water, then filling the rest with ice. This tends to make it taste watered-down and crappy, so many employees simply fill a cup with ice, pull the shots over the ice, then fill in more ice to replace the ice that melted. This makes a significantly better iced americano.
Make sure you order your iced americanos “no water.”
It would just be an iced expresso, No water Americano is an oxymoron
(Referring to the machines with buttons that pull shots automatically.)
Actually, Starbucks has those so that they don’t have to train their employees to pull shots. Same for Seattle’s Best. I would assume that any coffeeshop run by MBAs (especially a national chain) is probably going to be the same way.
Those machines are “tuned” to pull shots for the right amount of time. If a shot takes too long to pull (or too short), theoretically they adjust it before they pull any more shots, although I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that it doesn’t necessarily get noticed quickly. And no, they can’t hand tamp a shot if they want to.
Post 103:
Helllo??? 
I’d still very much like an answer to post #65. If I’m being snickered at by the guy at the coffee shop I’d like to know why.
It’s like watching grown men play marbles, or watch cartoons. Drinking hot chocolate is something we typically associate with kids, not grown men. There’s nothing wrong with it, but it tickles us in an “aww, how cute” way.
(True confession time…)
My sister is a True Starbucks Person (branded travel mugs, and all). My dad’s only Christmas request is Starbucks gift cards.
I, on the other hand, live out in the wilderness of caffeine-dom. A Starbucks recently opened five miles out of my normal commute, the next nearest is 10 miles in the other direction.
I’d like to look like an incomplete (as opposed to “total”) idiot whilst visiting my family. I like coffee and, at a specialty shop, would prefer something with a bit of chocolate and the merest smidge of stomach-lining buffer in terms of cream/milk.
What, pray tell, do I order?
(No, seriously! I really don’t have a Starbucks nearby. Not only is this a serious question, but it’d be nice to have an answer before I fly home on Wednesday!)
Hmm depending on how sweet or bitter you want it you could get a regular coffee with a few pumps of chocolate in it with room for creme. Or maybe a mocha with an add shot. (chocolate syrup, milk, and expresso). If you want it a little cremyier you can make it a Breve mocha, which we will use half and half instead of milk