Thread by @adamliaw

Amazing that as a nation we have managed to produce some of the most unbearable coffee snobs the world has ever seen, and yet nobody really even knows what a macchiato is.

People who want coffee with milk but not a whole lot of milk used to order macchiatos. Then we started calling people who make coffee baristas and they got drunk with power and started giving people macchiatos that were a shot with like a teaspoon of foam on top.

So then the coffee-with-a-little-bit-of-milk people started ordering long macchiatos and nobody could even work out what that was.

Then the baristas countered by saying that a long macchiato was actually a piccolo, and everyone was like OK. But then the baristas started fighting about what a piccolo was and we were getting anything from 40ml of coffee-with-a-little-bit-of-milk to like 200ml double shots.

So then some barista who should really go to prison said that coffee-with-little-bit-of-milk should be made with *snort* ristrettos and called a "Magic" and everyone was like honestly how hard is it to just get coffee-with-little-bit-of-milk.

It's all a game of cat and mouse really.

I am going to open a cafe chain where you order coffee by just stating the number of shots and volume of milk you want.

"I'll have a 2/150."

"I'll have a 1/100. Skim."

My digital coffee ordering system will disrupt the entire global coffee system.

A traditional latte is a shot of coffee and 145ml of milk but we’ll just make it 150 because this is metric and people need to make sacrifices for the sake of efficiency. You would instead order a 1/150. A strong latte, for example, could be a 1/100 or a 2/200.

You just use the same scales as those fancy European pour-over places use but instead of water over grinds we pour steamed milk over espresso because this is Australia.

Please stop replying to this thread trying to explain cortados. If you’re ordering cortados you’re the problem I’m trying to fix dammit.

The principle benefit of this method will be an egalitarian pricing system charging coffee by the shot, and milk in 100ml increments. Perhaps $2 per shot, and $1 per unit of milk. A latte (now called a 1/150) would then simply be $3.50.

Hot water would of course be free, thereby removing the obtuse scenario where a single shot is $3, another shot is 50c and TOPPING IT UP WITH BLOODY HOT WATER FOR A "LARGE" LONG BLACK IS LIKE AN EXTRA $2. Cafes need to address this but they can't because the system is broken.

I'm OK, you guys.

Ultimately this will help baristas and consumers alike. Within a few years we'll all be carrying re-useable cups into cafes (if you aren't already, you should) so the ability for a cafe to control the quality of their offering requires an approach that is not cup-dependent.