It was the best of days, it was the worst of days

So here's my coffee day. Turns out that due to lack of numbers, the day was switched to Friday.

I decided to catch the train into the city. Now I never catch the train - not since I was a poor student but I wanted to avoid the hassle of parking in the CBD so I drove to Sutherland and got an all stations to Town Hall. Commuter trains are very depressing. Everyone is sad. No-one is smiling. You smile at someone as they walk past to find a seat and they look at you like you're a freak. Everyone buries their head in a book, or stares blankly out the window. Everywhere but at the people around them. Except for some Argentinian tourists. They seemed like ordinary people. Turns out, they got on the right line but were going in the wrong direction. And they didn't care, they were just laughing and got off at the next stop to catch the other train back.

The barista class was in the Dymocks building, so this was easy to find too. I walked in and the first thing the instructor did was offer me a coffee. Sure. And it was awesome. Great I think, I'm going to be able to make coffee like this!

There was only 3 in the class - but that's good. More attention, less waiting. One was another guy who was also given the class as a gift. The other was a young girl who'd just finished her HSC and was going to live in the UK, and was after some skills to find work. Pretty good idea.

We were introduced to the history of coffee, how (and when, by who and where) it is grown, picked, washed, dried, sorted, roasted, ground, etc, etc, etc. Then, it was on to the frothing. This is the bit that I was looking forward to the most. If I could make perfect milk froth at home, then I would be a coffee legend and all those who come before me would kneel and thank their maker that they could be so blessed as to be in my presence. Um... er.... perhaps they'd just say "Hey, great coffee Mbrain!" That'd do fine.

So it turns out that I'm f*&#ing great at frothing milk. After just a few attempts, I had perfect (yes perfect) micro froth. I think the phrase used by the instructor was "Excellent milk Mbrain!" It's all about the swirl you see. Get the swirl going, introduce a little bit of air, move to the centre to create a vortex, then out again to keep it going to reach 60 degrees. That's it. Sounds simple, and I was a natural.

I'm the man.

Next, the espresso. Now, my home machine is super-auto, so all this was only partially relevant to my situation, however I could apply some of the concepts to adjust my machine to make the best coffee possible. Apparently Jura don't make the grind fine enough and therefore the pour is too quick. Apparently 25 seconds for a 30mL espresso is the "ideal". More on that later. The machines in the course are San Marino 2 group espresso machines, just like this 3 group one I saw on ebay last night.

So then we went through all the coffee styles. Espresso, cappuccino, caffe latte, macchiato, ristretto, long black, long white, doppio, caffe mocha, etc, etc. And made them all. Again, I was freaking awesome at it.

Wrapping things up, we learned about cleaning the machine and that was the day. Awesome. I learned some great skills, had a fun day and could now go home and make brilliant coffee at home. Wooot!

I'll spare you details of the train ride home. More of the same boring people doing nothing except stare at their shoes or pretend they're on the set of The Return of the Living Dead.

I get home. Fire up the machine. Ok, adjust grind, adjust water volume, yes, that looks about right. OK, milk into jug, setup milk thermometer. Right, go!

No swirl.

Shit.

What the fuck. Try again, different angle. Go.

No swirl.

Mother.

I wanted to smash things. The perfect day turns to shit. Well, that's a bit over the top. It was very very frustrating. To know that you can do this, and to get home and it not work was infuriating. And why was it not working? The steam wand on my machine is designed exclusively for coffee novices who can't be bothered to learn how to froth milk properly. There is no "normal" nozzle to do it properly. You see, the nozzle has a HUGE hole so the velocity of the steam is quite low - meaning no spin. No spin means no micro foam. So it's either warm non frothed milk, or a bubbly mess.

I found this after frantic googling last night. Someone with the same problem who solved it by fitting a different tip, from a different machine. Smaller holes, higher speed, better swirl. Now all I have to do is do the same thing. So that's my mission. Find a tip that will fit my steam wand that doesn't have holes the size of the grand canyon.

So all in all, a great day. Accentuated by frustration, tempered by a mission. Coffee magic on hold, but only temporarily. Watch this space peeps.