Word has it that this business was recently acquired by the owners of Koffee Kup, for better or for worse.
Coffee Haus has a rather stripped-down feeling atmosphere, but it's quite cozy nonetheless.
There is a Brasilia Portofino 2-group machine, with a Mazzer SuperJolly (that I could see.. there might be more). This shop uses a Melitta cup-at-a-time brew system for drip coffee, unfortunately, all of the coffee is ground hours before use and stored in tupperware containers. Coffee is scooped out of the tupperware container, and into the filter prior to brewing. While the coffee is BREWED fresh, it is not ground fresh, which sort of defeats the whole purpose of the cup-at-a-time concept for quality and freshness of product.
Drink Ordered:
Traditional Cappuccino
Grind per shot: no
Tamped: yes
Extraction time: about 20 seconds
The PBTC dosed ground coffee from a VERY full doser into the double filterbasket. The filterbasket was not entirely full, and no distribution method was used, when the too-small tamper was pressed down onto the "mound" (it was more of an unorganized pile, really) of ground coffee in a not-so-vertical manner. There was a significant angle on the top of the puck before locking into the group-head.
The espresso was pulled into a rather large (3oz, or so) metal recepticle, and not directly into the for-here cappuccino cup. Why, I will never understand.
The espresso was then poured into the cup, which was just under half full (meaning, the espresso was about 2.75oz in volume.. far too much liquid for a double shot).
A gigantic (I want to say much bigger than 32oz, but I have no idea how much bigger.. far too large for a cappuccino, regardless) milk pitcher was 1/3 filled with milk, and the milk-coated steam-wand was sunk into the pitcher. The steam was activated, and the end product was poured into the cup with the froth being held back. the cup was filled nearly to the brim before the PBTC stopped pouring liquid, and, at which point, began to spoon some foam ontop of the contents of the cup.
The foam was possibly some of the worst I have ever seen in Lubbock. It did not appear that the barista had been adequately trained.
The espresso was watery, diluted, and over-extracted. I detected about a 15% robusta in the blend, which didn't help matters outside of crema-production.. there was a thin layer, thanks to the robusta.
The taste was surprisingly not overly bitter. I was able to drink the whole thing without the addition of sugar or other sweeteners.
I get the impression that the blend is very forgiving, but that the skills of the staff are not up to par.
Total Score:
2 out of 10
