#1186 Hot Milk

I have this running battle with baristas and baristos. Female or male, many of them seem to think they know how I like my coffee more than I know how I like my coffee.
And I like my coffee hot.
The list of preferences about my coffee is always headed by the term hot. It is the prime directive in my coffee book. I don’t drink coffee for the flavor. My tongue has far too many bitter tastebuds and foods like Brussels sprouts, grapefruit and coffee overwhelm it.
The subtleties of a good cup of coffee from fresh-ground hand-roasted beans are lost on me. As in the difference between a perfect temperature latte and one hot enough for me to enjoy.
So I always order it hot. To ensure this, I specify, “scalding hot.” “Hot enough to curdle the milk,” I say. “Scorch it.” I want the milk to have blisters.
They still use their stupid thermometer. And they still don’t understand that good customer service is to give me what I want.
I had one tell me the other day that she would only make my coffee as hot as her personal morals would allow. I’m sorry, the temperature of coffee is not a moral thing. I’m not killing an animal. It doesn’t figure in the dietary restrictions of Leviticus. “Thou shalt not scald thy milk nor make a leaf pattern in thy latte.”
Such is the hold coffee making has taken on our serious youthful barista cult. They make the coffee their way, to hell with the customer.
Then again, there is a limit to customer service. One could argue that a southern sheriff witnessing a lynching without intervening is doing customer service too. He’s just bowing to the will of the majority and giving the customers what they want. Pity the fellow in the minority on the other end of the rope.
I’m not saying customer service is the be all and end all. But there’s a vast difference between a lynching and a hot cup of joe.
So make my latte too hot to hold, and if I bobble it as a result, let me cry over the spilt milk.
America, ya gotta love it.