There is a scene that you have surely lived if you have asked for a coffee in a restaurant or a cafeteria: you ask for a coffee with milk or a capuchino and, after assembling value, you ask that the milk is not very hot. That is when such a coffee serve you darkness And you hear the crackling of a milk that ceased to be a edible product to become a lava.
And there is something important to take into account in all this: although the coffee they use is good -Not Torrefacto-, such hot milk is ruining the drink.
Specialty coffee shops against lava. Prepare a coffee It is a very meticulous process. The problem is that the coffee culture of many sites is quite improvable, which has led us to think that the way of drinking any preparation that is not a single with ice must be an experience in which we have to spend ten minutes waiting for coffee to cool.
The difference between a specialty cafeteria and any bar is not alone in coffee, but also in how they treat milk. And that is where the temperature comes into play. In specialty coffee shops, any coffee that carries milk will be rather temperate. You can even start taking it as soon as they serve you. This is not for Eviction the table as soon as possible and that the following client passes, but for something deeper and that has a scientific basis.
65 ° C.. That is the maximum temperature that the milk of a coffee with milk should have. Anyone between 55 and 65 degrees Celsius, happens to be more accurate, and maintaining it is crucial to protect something fundamental in milk: its proteins. When we heat the milk with the foamer, if we stay in that temperature range, their proteins experience something called ‘denaturation’.
This means that milk proteins lose their structure and form spheres around the air bubbles that are produced when milk subjected to the sparkling. That process, together with the interaction between the casein and the fat of the milk, serves to stabilize the foam, making it more creamy. The sweetness of the liquid is also enhanced without falling into the burned of it because the natural sugars of milk break down just as not to pass.
And? If we pass temperature, the balance between fats and proteins is broken, so the foam will be more airy and lose that softness and creaminess, making the drink less dense. But apart from the aesthetic function (because the art is worse with milk that exceeds 65 degrees) and the alteration of the texture of the drink, there is another issue that we must take into account.
When we exceed the temperature, the proteins are excessively denatured, which leads to the excess of air bubbles that we have already commented, but also to the presence of a flavor that can be unpleasant because the sugars are passed and the fats are oxidized. In addition, the texture will not be so velvety and we will not only have a much flatter drink in flavor, also in terms of density.
Template, better. And it happened to me. Going to a specialty cafeteria for the first time and finding a tempered capuchino was a surprise, but beyond the initial by temperature, the next was that there were fruity notes of the coffee I could appreciate. Preparing the same type of coffee in my house, with a foamer who later saw that it exceeds that temperature, all those notes, simply vanished. My mistake during all that time? Do not pay attention to temperature.
And that temperature is one of the many reasons why drinking coffee with milk in many countries, and out of specialty coffee shops, is a battle. Preparing good coffee is very complicated, so much that there are those who study What are the best reactions and temperatures To, among many other issues, heat the right the milk to change the texture of the drink without affecting its flavor too much.
Ojito with reuse. On the other hand, and I recognize that it has also happened to me, we cannot reuse the milk that we have already subjected to this process in the foamer. The scene may sound to you: it is one of the first times you make coffee with your new coffee maker and you throw more milk in the jar. That goes up as it is foam, so we have half left and we decided to take a glass jar, let it temper and store it in the refrigerator to use it in another coffee.
We spread it again and … there is the error. It’s something James Hoffman –Barista and coffee disseminator- already explained A few years ago: when we heated milk for the second time, we are exaggerating the denaturation of proteins and promoting oxidation of fats, which generates a more stale flavor and an unpleasant texture.
Therefore, if you want to prepare a better Latte At home, it is best to have a steel jar that allows us to feel the ideal temperature and, until we have trained the sense of touch to identify what that temperature is, something like a cheap kitchen thermometer will serve as a guide. Everything is to stop drinking milk in poor condition with each homemade cap …
Image | Chris Reyem
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