Java Jaguar

Not that the bikini makes her less smart. What the bikini really means is, she doesn’t have to care.

So this is an actual issue that those large manual espresso machines used to have and nobody knew about it. Back in my Starbucks days (and the rumor is that my old store in Koko Marina Shopping Center on Oahu, was the last Starbucks store in the entire country to switch from the manual espresso machines to the automated ones.

We used to have a regular customer that would come in for a doppio (just two shots of straight espresso). Frequently, he would tell us that it didn’t taste right. Even though the shot was brewed in the right time frame (18 to 23 seconds), with the right amount of grounds. Sometimes, he would return it, have us re-make it, which we were happy to do, and the second one would always be fine.

It wasn’t until about 4 years later when I was working at the Nordstrom Espresso Bar in Ala Moana Shopping Center during our training that the main espresso technician guy explained about the issue with the steam boiler being too close to the water line. So you literally need to run the water for about two seconds to get rid of the water that is too hot for brewing a proper espresso.

That’s when I finally figured out… that old Starbucks customer was not crazy. It just so happens that if he walked in and there weren’t customers in line ahead of him, then he was getting the first set of shots and the grounds were actually getting overcooked. Mind you, you really need to be a coffee connoisseur to be able to taste the difference…

Now all of you know about this design flaw as well. Hopefully, you can use this knowledge to blow up the next Death Star or something.

Today’s Java… well almost got missed because I lost track of the day of the week. A hazard when you are full-time nomadic. Today’s Java was drawn and uploaded from a beautiful neighborhood in Tiburon, California where I am taking care of a German Shorthaired Pointer named Piper.