China Yunnan pour over on the bar.
I'm Lucie Fink, I'm a video producer at Refinery29,
but every so often I like to try
other people's jobs.
Today, I'm at the La Colombe
Hudson Square location in New York City.
And I'm gonna see if I have what it takes
to be a barista.
This is Lucie for Hire.
My name's Josey and I'm the director
of education and culture for La Colombe Coffee
Roasters.
The most challenging part of this job is probably
maintaining a high standard
and keeping things consistent
while performing in very high volumes.
I think Lucie's got a lot of experience
in a lot of different industries
and I figure
that she'll pick up on this fairly quickly.
Let's see what we can do.
Your first challenge is coffee school.
So if I was just a trainee that came in here
and you just went learn,
how can I digest
this in 10 minutes?
I can't?
No, no, no.
Point me to the important pages.
See this?
Mind your grind.
I am a little bit nervous because I'm handed this manual
and it's written by Josey.
I'm trying to cram all this information into my brain,
but it's a lot to take in.
So what's the proper ratio of coffee to water
if we're gonna prepare a pour over?
16 grams of coffee...
to 32 grams of water.
Oh, no.
A 1 to 16 ratio.
1 gram of coffee to 16 grams of water.
And as it turned out, I learned nothing.
Am I even ready for the next step here?
Can anyone really be?
Okay.
But you got to take a leap sometime, right?
Right.
Should we just do the pour over and we'll see
how I do on that?
Sure.
Okay.
This is a single origin, Guatemala from La Hermosa.
It's gonna be delightful.
So we have 25 grams of coffee.
25.
Oh, that's beautiful.
Yeah.
Times 16...
Now, that'll tell us how much water we need
in relation to our dose, right?
400 grams.
The brain on Lucie, 400 Gs.
It's time to set the timer
for 2 minutes and 30 seconds and let it brew.
So we're going to start pouring slowly in
little circles, right?
And then once we have our slurry
I'm just going to pour kind of harder in the middle.
And then all this time I'm looking at my numbers
down here because I want to stop at 400 remember?
And then we pull it....ooh, so dangerously close.
Oh my god.
Three, two, one.
All right, all right.
So now that our timer has gone off,
we grab this and we do a little wiggle.
And then we're just going to set this on here.
Woah.
Then it was my turn to do it myself.
Pour them into the wet filter.
2 minutes and 30 seconds.
Starts...
Now.
And now pour a little harder,
but right in the middle.
So you want to tilt harder... nice.
I feel like I'm getting the technique.
My hand is swirling in a circle,
I'm wetting all the grounds.
It's trickling, it's trickling.
And the best part of all of this is that
after we have a cup of coffee,
Josey and I taste the coffee.
And there's a special technique for tasting the coffees.
He basically said, you want the coffee to
just spray all over your mouth.
This is a great cup of coffee.
Yeah I'm into it.
I would say you may have bested this challenge.
Thank you so much.
Yeah.
The second challenge will be dialing in espresso.
Our recipe for this is going to be 16 grams of coffee,
approximately
turned into 32 milliliters of espresso
in a matter of 20 to 22 seconds.
First, he bangs out the portafilter from the
previous brew.
Then he takes a rag, rinses it out.
It has to be very clean before he places it
beneath the actual espresso machine to let
the grounds trickle in.
That machine is programmed to let out a specific
number of grams of ground.
As soon as that's in there, he just taps it gently to even it out
and then he places it down on the rubber
pad and takes the tamp
and pushes it down.
But there is a lot of wrist action
that you have to be careful of here.
He goes back to the espresso machine, he presses
the on button just to sort of clean it out,
and then he snaps the porta filter onto the machine.
And as soon as it's on, he just presses go.
We take the espresso out and we taste it.
And it is rich.
Fruity.
It's almost like coffee comes from a fruit or something.
It's almost like it does.
Then, I'm up.
I take it out from the grinder and then I tap
it out to make it even.
And then my first tamp is completely uneven.
Yeah, it's totally uneven.
Let's do it again.
I tamp it, we look at it, and then I go over to the
espresso machine.
I snap it in and press go.
Oh, my gosh, I'm totally missing the cup.
Oh, no!
And the espresso is just pouring out of the wrong hole,
missing the cup completely.
Yeah, you want to really get it up in there.
Oh my gosh.
Third time's the charm.
I do the whole thing one more time
and I'm pretty proud of it.
Tasted very rich and dark and creamy,
and Josey seemed to like it too.
Wow.
Deep.
Deep, right?
Rich?
Yes.
But I did a good job?
You did a great job.
My first expresso that wasn't from an espresso machine.
You did a fantastic job.
The third challenge will be steaming
and pouring milk.
There's only really one way
in which to get good at steaming milk,
and that's by doing it and doing it and
doing it and doing it and doing it...
And doing it.
Yep, yep, yep.
Got it.
Like, for a long time.
Alright, so we fill the pitcher up
about to the bottom of the lip.
First we'll clear it out.
We'll put it at a 45 degree angle, okay?
Uh-huh.
We're gonna tilt the pitcher so that the tip's
kind of just sneaking out, right?
And then we'll crank it up.
You hear that sound?
We want to hear that for a couple of seconds
before you fully emerge the wand just to heat
the milk.
And then...
Ah!
Are you okay?
It's a milk fountain.
This is properly steamed milk.
Latte art.
Everybody wants to do latte art, right?
But you gotta start somewhere.
Come down into the drink
and then cut through it.
And then you've got a little heart.
That looks really easy enough.
Right?
But it's not.
Right to the lip.
Now these shots are going to be done before
you're done steaming and we're okay with that.
Now you want to tilt the pitcher
so you see the tip peek out just a little
and then you wanna crank it up.
Now, you want to hear that sound
for a couple of seconds.
Before fully submerging it.
Now feel how hot it is.
Nice.
You want to keep your flow rate the same
the whole time, okay?
Okay.
Now tilt the cup, but come down in.
Now tilt the cup more.
Now go through.
Oh my god almighty.
There's my first latte.
It's dadaism.
It's an abstract piece.
Really screams my name.
Sweet and frothy.
The final challenge is serve someone a drink.
You look good.
I think I'm ready to go into the wild.
I think so too.
Let's try it out.
See ya at the bar.
Follow me.
Okay.
And now I am about to go out onto the floor
to work behind the bar.
I'm a little nervous.
I'm going to do my best
and I will see you behind the bar.
We're making someone's drink!
Beautiful.
Alright, let it go one minute.
Place it.
Nice.
Alright, we got to hustle, Lucie, hustle.
We're getting in the weeds.
We are.
Oat Cap.
Alright, keep some shots coming.
We're going to work together.
Almond Latte.
Double espresso.
You're killing it Lucie.
Killing it.
Latte time.
A cortado to stay and what to go?
Pouring and serving.
Pour harder,
get down into the cup,
tilt the cup,
pour harder,
tilt the cup,
pick up and go through.
Oh, that's nice.
It's a seedling.
Latte.
Thank you so much.
Enjoy.
Alright alright.
Thanks for being the best teacher.
Thanks for being the best student.
I will be back and I'll be behind the bar.
I can't wait. Bring that effervescence.
Was I hired?
Six more weeks of training?
Yeah, six more weeks of training.
Okay, see you there.
Hey, YouTube! Thanks for watching this episode of Lucie for Hire.
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See you next time!
I spilled.