Okay, so you’d like one of our coffees? “Just a latte, please”, you say (sometimes more than a thousand times a month at Clip ‘n Climb Ipswich) as you peruse the cake menu, distracted by home-made delicacies and a host of other sweet treats. Well, to our café staff there is no such thing as ‘just’ a cup of coffee and you may actually be a little surprised to learn what exactly goes into creating our perfect brew.
It goes without saying that there will be high quality, well-maintained, fastidiously-cleaned equipment involved and you’ve probably also added regular training and quality assurance from experienced Paddy and Scott’s barista trainers into the mix. You’d be right, of course, but what you might not appreciate is that to maintain the highest levels of consistency at Clip ‘n Climb Ipswich, we take things to a whole other level. Obsessive? Perhaps. But we know that you love coffee as much as we do so it’s just our way of giving it our best shot. Literally.
Each coffee starts with an espresso base – a standard double of the Muchomba Blend – ground each and every time to a hundredth of a second, ensuring that exactly 16g of ground coffee is dispensed without fail, time after time. Next, it takes a deft, human, touch as the coffee is tamped into the porta-handle (not too tightly and never too loosely) leaving it compacted and back-of-your-hand flat for a totally even extraction. Once pressurized water gets involved – which must take not less than 20, but never more than 30 seconds in order to balance flavours, tannins, oils and caffeine – you are left with 32g of black gold ready for the next part of the alchemy. And, if all that sounds a bit fussy, just wait till you hear about the milk!
The final and, perhaps, most exacting part of the ‘just a latte’ process involves a magical coming together of steam and cold, fresh milk until precisely 70 degrees is attained. Those in the know will nod quietly as ‘stretching’, ‘spinning’ and ‘polishing’ number among the final few steps in the process now into double figures. For real aficionados, we must also whisper quietly the words ‘latte art’ that adds a personal signature to every creation.
We can’t wait to get back to making you coffee at the Clip ‘n Climb Ipswich cafe – as well as tempting you with many of our other fab home-made products, of which we’re equally proud. We know you especially love the coffee we serve (judging by the amount we get through) in all of its guises. We hope that you will now appreciate your coffee just a little more knowing that there is actually no such thing as ‘just a latte’ and that, for our cafe staff and their OCD (obsessive coffee dedication!) tendencies, the daily grind is anything but.
