From another thread, Amateur Barbarian has this to say:
It seems to me there’s a fourth possibility:
After 20 years, SB has latched onto a way to mix these two ingredients that people elsewhere have been doing, themselves, for years, but which Starbucks had yet to do.
As to 1), I don’t think this is true because I, me my ownself did a blind test precisely to allay my own suspicions and could tell a clear distinction between the latte and the flat white, both in flavor and mouthfeel. Preferred the flat white.
I don’t think 2) is true because if there are weird ingredients in Starbucks’s pure unflavored coffee/milk drinks, I would think this information would be readily available online. Maybe I’m overoptimistic, or am just failing to find it?
is not something anyone is claiming, since the whole idea is that flat whites have been around for years and Starbucks is only just now cottoning onto the concept. Home baristas make flat whites millions of times every day.
I wouldn’t argue against the possibility, only that it’s odd that there’s a way to mix two or three ingredients that the world’s most ridiculously prolific seller of same hadn’t bothered to ever try. Amid endless micro-variations on large, small, biggi, hot, cold, with, without and upside down. And now, somehow, just plain old 'spresso and milk has a completely new variation in their hands.
Something does not add up, here. I think eventually there will be an “oh, yeah, by the way” addendum to the story.
Are you just straight up ignoring every post that clear states that it’s been around in Australia since the 70’s and is clearly prepared differently from a cappuccino or a latte?
I think you could get the same kind of drink in the US by ordering a “backwards Americano” - water first, then espresso. I haven’t tried it myself, but it might be interesting.
No, because many of those comment came along late in the thread(s).
However, on reading about the supposed differences between the two or three basic “coffee+milk” beverages, based on the subtlest shadings of what’s heated when and how and the exact consistency to which the milk is foamed and how they are layered in the cup by highly skilled artisans… it pretty much confirms what I think of people who drop $1k or more at Starbucks on an annual basis.
The wookie entry on the Flat White - or is it the Flat white, or flat white? - is a ten-year history of nearly theological debate, for example.
They also don’t have cortado on the menu. They’re all just small tweaks to coffee:milk ratio and how the milk is heated. It doesn’t necesarily make sense to offer every variation.
Yes. Even as a very devoted coffee-as-coffee aficionado, I really can’t tell the difference between the endless coffee+dairy variations, nor much care if I can. I’ll go heavy on the cream for after-dinner coffee, when I drink it and when I don’t order a mocha instead, but I’ve never developed the slightest taste - in either sense - for ice-a-cream-a coffees. So the nearly religious arguments about one vs. the others is highly amusing.
Well, I was thrown by the fact that it’s Starbucks, which doesn’t seem to allow many gaps in its product array or marketing plans, and a variation that’s been well-known in a large-ish market since before SB existed. Seems… sloppy of them.
They haven’t stumbled upon anything new, even for themselves. They saw the flat white elsewhere and deliberately mimicked it. They hadn’t offered it before because they didn’t think there would be a enough of a (U.S.) market for it, relative to the expense of offering it.
And, yes, of course varying the preparation and ratio of ingredients can change the taste of something. Do you think cakes and cookies taste the same?
But you say that’s baking and science. So are microfoams. And if they didn’t change the taste, they wouldn’t be so big. You’ve got more air in the mixture and probably slightly scalded milk.
Well, the flat white (done correctly) requires a specific milk technique and a ristretto shot (which yields less coffee for the amount of beans used). Because it’s more of a specialist drink, I don’t think SB would want to deal with people complaining if it isn’t done perfectly. So presumably they had to upgrade the firmware in their robots.
