Joe: The Art of Coffee

How to pull the perfect espresso shot? The baristas at Joe in New York City are the best. This video shows the skills required to make a perfect espresso shot including sourcing the best coffee beans, grinding them correctly, timing the pull just right, and serving it in a cappuccino, latte, mochaccino, or just as a shot. Joe has locations in Greenwich Village, Chelsea, the Upper West Side and in Grand Central Terminal.

Here's more from the video:
My name is Jonathan Rubenstein, I own Joe in New York City. Joe has five locations in Manhattan and our primary focus is to treat coffee as a culinary art.

[Will Gross, barista] The first step in the process is dosing which is actually getting the coffee into the portafilter....

When we opened our first location in 2003 New York didn't really have an artisan coffee bar, they had Starbucks, they had deli coffee, they had a few people that were really trying it, but no one had really treated coffee as a culinary art....

...tamping is a two-part process. There's a ten pound and a little knock to get the coffee off the sides and then a thirty pound...

Espresso is a very tricky thing to make correctly and there's a lot of theory and lot of science behind it...there are a whole set of variables, there are steps that have to be followed very exactly.

This is the espresso.

[141 Waverly Place, New York, 10014, Greenwich Village café]
[Gabrielle Rubenstein] The important thing as far as the beans is concerned is the freshness of the beans so we get our beans two or three beans a week and when we call and make an order they don't just take the bag that's already been roasted that's been sitting on the shelf they take the green beans, they roast them in small, small batches, they bag them, they send them the same day.

...and there's certain things you want to look for when you're pulling a shot of espresso...flow rate, which is the speed at which the espresso is flowing. The time at which it drops...it should drop at around six seconds and then it should run (Espresso to go!) then it should run to about 22 to 26 or 27 seconds.

Our baristas will go through about a month of training just pulling espresso shots before they even touch or talk about milk.

When you're steaming the milk it's important to focus on the consistency for the drink you're making depending on whether it's a cappuccino or a latte so for the latte it's going to be more wet in consistency and for a cappuccino it's going to be more dry....

This is a small double cappuccino.

For someone to be a great barista they really have to understand food and coffee and wine -- they really have to be excited about taste because if they're not someone who really understands and enjoys and is passionate about food and taste they're never going to really understand why it's important and how it's so important to make great espresso.

Non-fat cappuccino.

So with a latte you're not going to get too much air at the surface but you want this whirlpool effect to start pretty much immediately.

You can get an espresso, or a latte, or a cappuccino almost anywhere but that's a very different product than we think we're serving. Ours is all about the quality of the coffee beans, the quality of the milk, the training of the baristas and obviously great equipment.

You wanna get all the bubbles out from the espresso and the milk so you have a smooth consistency in both. The most important thing to do when pouring a latte is to really tip the pitcher...

Unless you have all those elements together it's not really possible to get what we call a beautiful, artisan, hand-crafted espresso drink.

That's a large latte.

Category:

Howto & Style

Tags:

• espresso
• cappuccino
• coffee
• New York City
• Greenwich Village
• cafe
• best coffee
• best espresso
• latte
• making espresso

[angryniggah]

"that'll be 32 dollars."

[russethlee]

I love this coffee. JOE: The Art of Coffee is one of my favorites! I am so happy this Joe Columbia opened!

[panhead88]

this is a well made video. Awesome.