Nanjing COSTA Cafe Barista: Sun Dalei

Sun Dalei's award-winning work "caffeine mashed Potato".

Sun Dalei is making coffee meticulously.

Cafes around the corner can be seen everywhere, handsome baristas come into view, they wear beautiful long aprons, neat and stylish hairstyles, and use elegant methods to make all kinds of coffee for people. When they take cups of coffee with charming mellow flavor from their hands, and when the taste of sweetness and bitterness turns in the mouth for thousands of times, they can't help but sigh that they are not only making coffee, but also creating the scenery in the coffee cup. Yangzi Evening News reporter Zhou Xining / Wen Yangzi Evening News reporter Song Xing / Photo

A cup of coffee is full of creativity.

Sun Dalei is the only barista in Nanjing Jinlun Xintiandi COSTA Cafe with two "silver beans" pinned to his neckline and wearing "golden beans" clothes. It is said that silver beans represent the level of baristas here, while gold beans are the honor for the winners of the relevant awards in the Coffee Family Coffee Masters Competition. When it comes to golden beans, Sun Dalei is a little proud. his award-winning work is called "Fried Potato". He introduces his coffee concept while demonstrating the work made of purple potato and coffee. In his opinion, making coffee is more like a game, adding different amounts of milk to Espresso can form cappuccino, mocha, latte, and add all kinds of fruit juices, tea and soy milk to Espresso. What will that lead to? Because there are a lot of question marks, so there are many ideas. The reason for the emergence of "caffeine mashed potato" is that Grandpa loves purple potato so much that he must steam one every morning, so Sun Dalei made up the idea of purple potato, beat purple potato and ice cubes into mud and poured it into the bottom of the cup, then added coffee, poured cream, sprinkled purple potato foam, and made a cup of coffee with distinct colors and rich earthy flavor. In addition to conveying the concept of health, Sun Dalei thought that purple potato would convey the concept of health. This product from the earth with coffee, produces the taste of first love, sweet, simple, delicate fragrance, but also a slightly bitter aftertaste.

Sun Dalei said that making coffee is really a creative thing, such as the "ice and fire" made by colleagues with chili juice and iced coffee, making a fire in one mouthful and cold in the mouth.Maybe that taste is not acceptable to everyone, but it can definitely make people remember for a long time and make their hearts happy. In addition, such as the coffee made of coconut milk and mint, filled in the coconut shell, take a sip, it is absolutely cool. In addition to the preparation of coffee materials can be varied, coffee utensils can also have many patterns, coconut shell, pumpkin shell, orange peel …... You can play whatever you want. Sun Dalei once wanted to use rice cakes as utensils. During the afternoon tea, he could chew the rice cakes after drinking coffee, but he gave up because the rice cakes absorbed a lot of coffee and didn't taste good. Sun Dalei said that to be a good barista requires not only an artistic feeling, but also a zealous attitude towards life.

It takes a month to practice pulling a floret.

Many people's understanding of baristas begins with "pulling flowers". When making cappuccinos, when foaming milk is poured into the coffee but not mixed in, the barista shakes his wrists and changes the white and brown colors into a beautiful pattern, sometimes pulling out a heart shape and sometimes pulling out a flower or a leaf. Sun Dalei said that when making cappuccino, milk foaming is very important. When making milk foam, the milk should be rotated. Only in this way can the milk foam be fine and lubricated. When playing milk foam, the temperature should be controlled well. No more than 160 ℃, 150 ℃ or so of milk foam is considered to taste best when mixed with coffee. Making flower drawing looks simple, but it takes practice. When the cup of coffee is nearly full, it begins to pull flowers and finish a pattern quickly. If it is slow, the milk either melts or spills out of the cup. Sun Dalei said that he has practiced it more than 100 times. Now you can skillfully pull heart-shaped patterns and leaf patterns. As for the complex shapes such as cute rabbits, Paris towers and bears that are often found on the Internet, they are basically painted with foam and should be called painted flowers, not pull flowers. Their approach is relatively simple, pour milk slowly, shake the cup with your wrist while pouring, let the milk fully blend into the coffee, let the cappuccino become completely brown, instead of white mixed with coffee, and then dig out the right amount of milk foam, or cream, put it in the cup and slowly smear out your favorite pattern with a small spoon.

Although many people know baristas because of the patterns in their coffee cups, Sun Dalei believes that drawing flowers is really not an important part of judging baristas. He said that coffee actually has more than 3000 flavors, and there are five main flavors that people can taste, namely, sour, fragrant, bitter, sweet and mellow. a good barista needs to make all these five flavors in dozens of seconds. you must have a good sense of taste and visual discrimination, observe coffee beans, observe coffee powder, observe milk foam, and master the temperature of the machine, the pressure of water and the proportion of coffee beans. We have to cooperate well in all aspects.