I think I'm a socialist.......

I never thought I'd say this but I think we need a National Coffee Standard, and tighter regulation on what people can call coffee to sell it....... well, that's probably taking it to far, however a voluntary third party rating system would go a long way.

I'm thinking of something along the lines of a Michelin Star rating system where experts would rate coffee shops and individual baristas and I sincerely wish I had the knowledge to start it off. I guess this blog is a very very basic form.

I'm getting a little tired of paying $3.50 for a "coffee" that looks and tasts like Taubmans undercoat. What's with that?

So you take your small double shot latté back and say, "Hi there, sorry to interrupt your very important discussion about Michael Jackson's secret girlfriend, but this coffee tastes really under extracted. Do you think you might be able to make me a new one, please?" Now usually the "barista" will recoil back and you will get one of two responses;

1."under extracted, what does that mean?"

or

2."excuse me, under........... extracted..........! Are YOU a barista? I didn't think so......... Next waiting please"

With that little rant aside, yesterday I was at Alda's in Perth, it has a pretty cool atmosphere in all, not crowded, haggared timber floors lending a real sense of character to the joint, and a few Scandinavian design cues with the light woods and white walls. Coffee's not perfect but better than most places I've been to in WA. The coffee du jure is well extracted but this latte feels more like a flat white. Over all 7 out of 10.

Now that I think about it if I were a socialist I would spend billions of dollars bailing out a coffee shop's that didn't know how to make a good cup of coffee, rewarding failure wherever the opportunity arose. Makes sense right.

Feel free to coment and share your thoughts on how we can implement a system to keep the baristas honest.