Coffee Break #6

In this episode of Coffee Break with Rio and Joe, the hosts discuss various types of coffee shop beverages. They start by explaining that espresso is the base for most coffee drinks and can be made using equipment like an AeroPress. They also mention the popularity of cold brew among millennials. The hosts then discuss how to make a latte, including layering the ingredients and adding flavorings. They mention that certain drinks, like breviés, are simply a combination of coffee and dairy. They also discuss making iced coffee and blended drinks like frappes. The hosts emphasize the importance of using cold brew for cold drinks and suggest making coffee at home to save money. They mention that coffee shops provide a gathering place for people to enjoy coffee and desserts. The hosts conclude by suggesting the idea of hosting a coffee potluck brunch with friends. Welcome back, everybody, to another episode of Coffee Break with Rio and Joe, and today I'm not even going to ask Joe how she's doing, because we care more about our viewers and how you guys are doing, and more than that, we're looking to see how we can find a way to save you guys a buck. Ain't that right, Joe? That's right. So, in today's podcast, we're going to talk about coffee shops. And more specifically, we're going to be talking about coffee shop beverages and what they are. Right? I think a lot of people go into coffee shops knowing that what they want is a latte or a frappe or whatever, right? Or sometimes they don't know at all. Well, that's true, but most people that are the diehards that go there every day know exactly what they want. Yep. And they know what time they want it, too. So, we're going to dive in a little bit, and we're going to break it down so it's easy to understand what all goes into those drinks. That sounds like a plan. Where should we start? Let's start at the beginning. At the very basic level of espresso. Espresso is actually just extracted coffee under pressure. Yeah, it's an Italian word for pressed coffee. Yeah. So, people think that they need to buy the most expensive equipment to have their little coffee shop at home, but I think the neatest little gadget is called an AeroPress. A-E-R-O-P-R-E-S-S. And it's just a hand-pressed, pressurized little plastic device that you can extract a really good shot of espresso out of, or two shots if you want to. I usually put mine about a fourth full of coffee grounds and then press it. And I'm on the road traveling. Well, let's be honest here. We can't go based off of what you put in yours because not everybody is going to be able to handle that. Yeah. No. Well, they have the measurements. Okay. So, let's just start at the base of all coffee house drinks. Espresso. Coffee drinks, I should say, is espresso. And then you... None of them use drip? Yeah. Some of them use drip. Some of them use like espresso from the machine, and then they use the hot water wand and fill it up with water called a maracano. And some people now, most millennials and young people like something else, and that's called cold brew. Yes. That's not espresso. No, it's not, but you can make all of your homemade drinks at home, your coffee house drinks at home, like your Frappuccinos and things like that. You can have any ice drinks. That cold brew would be exceptional with it. So, what can you make with cold brew, but you can't make with espresso and vice versa? Well, I would say a lot of coffee shops put their... They pull extra shots of espresso to cool them down throughout the day because you can't put hot espresso on ice and have a good beverage because it'll be watered down. So, you either use your cold brew or... You could make coffee cubes. You could do coffee cubes. Those are... Using cold brew. Using cold brew. Oh, that's really good. You're genius. Because you don't want to use drip coffee because that might end up a little bitter. I think it just would be watered down. But if you use cold brew now, if you use cold brew with those cold drinks, but you're worried the espresso is going to melt them down, well, you could just put the cold brew cubes in there, and then what you get when those melt is more coffee. Coffee like a cold shot in the dark. Exactly. That's what you could call it, too. That's what it is. So, we just created something for you listeners out there. And then, from the espresso, you add... If you want just a latte, you froth the dairy or non-dairy, whatever you're going to put in that latte, over your espresso, and that's a latte. It's just your dairy or non-dairy creamer, and your shot of espresso or two. Depending on the size. Depending on the size. That's right. So, let's also talk about how you would layer that, because it sounds like there's a strategic way of doing that, instead of just throw everything in a cup and there you go. Well, the way we trained all of our employees on pulling those shots and creating the beverages is we wanted to have the coffee on the bottom, and there was a science to it, and then we poured the liquid, whether it was dairy or non-dairy, on top, so then it all kind of mixed together for the consumer. And Starbucks actually had one where they would pour the coffee down the middle of the liquid of the dairy or non-dairy, and to me, that wasn't really that great, because when I got to the bottom of the cup, I tried it. It was pretty concentrated at the bottom with the coffee, and the rest of the top was just milk. I liked it better where we pulled the shot, and then we just poured over top of the shot. And then, if you want to have your flavored latte, you take your flavoring, whatever you like the best, and this is the trick to having the most emulsified, beautiful flavored latte. You put your syrup in your dairy or non-dairy, and then you steam it with your steam wand, or if you have a froth or two, you can use that, and then you pour that over top of your espresso. You never want to put the flavoring on top of your espresso. It gives it a metallic, kind of an off taste. Because you take something that's either room temperature or a little colder than that and mix it with something that's hot, is that why it gives that off flavor? I think it's more of a chemical reaction, actually. And then, if you want to make your saucy drinks, there's the white chocolate sauce, and there's the chocolate. And you can get milk chocolate or dark chocolate in that. You make lattes with that, too? Oh, yeah. Yep. Those are like your mocha. You put your sauce, like your chocolate sauce, in the bottom of the cup, and you pour your dairy on top of it, stir it up real good, put your flavoring in your pitcher, and steam it, and then pour that, about half of that, into the chocolate sauce mixture, mix it up really well, and then pour it in your shot of espresso or two shots of espresso. So it sounds like anything and everything can go into a latte. Yep. Pretty much. In the dessert world, it's called everything but the kitchen sink. I think so. So is that the same as every other drink, then? Like what goes in a brevié, for instance? Oh, yeah. Well, a brevié is just a cup with several shots of, well, for me, several shots of espresso, and you top it with half-and-half or heavy cream. That's a brevié. So it's just dairy and coffee. That's it. There's no syrup. No syrup. No, none of that chocolate sauce that you can eat with a spoon after. No, none of that. And then if you want to get to your cold drinks, you can use your cold brew or you can use the espresso you put in the fridge if you make it ahead, and you take your 16-ounce cup, for example, we'll just go with that, and you fill it up with ice, you pour your espresso in there, or your cold brew, and then you pour your flavored dairy, whatever that may be. So if you want a flavored Frappuccino or something like that, or iced coffee, that's your iced coffee right there. Stir it up and give it to yourself. And then if you want to have like a blended, like a frappe, you just take that cup of ice that you filled with espresso and dairy and flavoring, and pour it in your mixer. Doesn't a frappe have a lot of sugar in it, though? Like a frappe base? Yeah, you can buy those frappe bases if you want to. But you can also make your own. And so Lynn, are you saying the best thing to do is with a cold coffee, use cold brew, and for a hot coffee, use espresso? Or if you want to use espresso in a hot, if you want to use espresso in a cold coffee, make it ahead of time. Yes. Because otherwise that hot coffee is going to melt your ice cubes and give you a watered down nasty drink. So you don't really want to take hot coffee and pour it in the cold drink? No, that's right. How come it seems like they do that? Well, some people might do that, but we don't do that here at Mojo Roast. We try and save people money and teach them how to do it at home. Where they can make it enjoyable, too. Exactly. Maybe even better than the coffee shop, then, if their coffee shop is the one that just throws the hot shots on top of the cold beverage. That's what. I remember back in the day where coffee was such a meeting place for people. When I was growing up as a kid, my mom always had a pot of coffee going, and there would be people coming in and out of the house drinking coffee, and if she made cookies or her homemade caramel rolls, they'd come in and have coffee and a sweet treat. And now, you know, we get up to such a busy lifestyle, it would be kind of fun to be able to sit down with friends at your house and enjoy some homemade coffee shop beverages that are way cheaper than y'all going out to a coffee shop and spending money. Well, the interesting thing is, is that never really went away, which you grew up experiencing as far as having the pot of coffee always on and the desserts, because if you go to a coffee shop, most of them have desserts that are house-made, or they get them elsewhere, and they're coffee. Do you know... And some places encourage people to come in and sit down as long as they want to, bring your computer, bring your books, bring whatever you want to, and just sit back and enjoy it. Like for instance, when Starbucks went into Barnes & Noble, that was probably one of the smartest things that they could have done. I agree. And by they, I mean both parties. Yeah. Because Barnes & Noble was like, okay, how can we get people into our doors? Well, come on in, get a coffee at this Starbucks that we have in here, and grab yourself a book, sit down as long as you want, and just enjoy yourself. So that part's never gone away. Coffee, it seems like it's always kind of been that drink that you enjoy as a, what do you call that, pastime? Yeah, or gathering time. I think it'd be fun just to get together with a bunch of friends and have like a coffee potluck brunch type thing in the morning times on our days off. That would be... You can make it a competition too, see who can come up with the better option. Yeah, that would be fun. So how many different options are there with drinks, popular options, I'm sure there's 150 otherwise. Oh my gosh, well you get to your basics, you know, your caramels, your vanillas, your chocolates, your hazelnuts, but there are so many different flavorings. And now we've just talked about the basic coffee drinks that you can get in a coffee house and make in your own home. But that's what I'm asking you about, what other type of coffee house drinks are there? You have your latte, which we've already went over, you have your brevi, which is just milk and coffee, and then you have your fraps, which you have your frap base and your coffee and your syrup, and a lot of people put their little caramel drizzle along the sidewall, you know, and make it look fancy. Oh, your cappuccino, where you have a third, a third, and a third. You have a shot of espresso, a shot of dairy, and then you have a third of foam on top. That's a proper cappuccino. See, the coffee houses here, we Americanize everything in this country. We've got Tex-Mex, we've got, you know, look at our Italian cuisine. We put our spin on it, and we've done that with espresso drinks, like the Italians, if they come here might be shocked a little bit to see some of this stuff. I remember hearing about a macchiato one time. Yeah, there you go, that's another popular one. Yeah, but not the way the Italians make it. It's just your espresso-based drink with, like, a tablespoon of foam on it. The first time I, I didn't know about those macchiatos that the coffee houses were putting out in 20-ounce cups, so get that mental picture in your head. One of my customers had asked me, well, how do you make a macchiato? And she's holding up a 20-ounce cup, and I'm thinking, oh boy, I only knew the original way where you do your espresso, and then you have a tablespoon of foam on top. Holy mackerel, I didn't know, I didn't know that you did it. It's almost like a latte, actually, is what it is, with a fancy name on it, and some caramel drizzled down the sides and whatnot all, but yeah, we put a spin on it. It's very, very easy. There are no rules. We always had a sign for drink of the day in our window, and, or on the front of the bar, and we had that for the simple fact that people were still so unfamiliar with what to order, they'd just stand there and look at the board and get really overwhelmed. Nine times out of ten, I sold the drink of the day, that day. No, you make, you make it easy for them, you make the decision for them. Exactly. You've got all your tea drinks and your bulba drinks, which you may want to touch on, because you're kind of a fan of those. A fan of which ones? Well, Lotus, Lotuses, and the Bulbas. Well, I was at one point in time, but since I've kind of stepped away from caffeine, I guess Italian sodas is the only thing I really would get at a coffeehouse, but, you know, as far as those go, and the same thing goes for your Lotuses, they're pretty much one and the same, Italian sodas and Lotuses, except for your Lotus beverages, and what Lotus is, it's a natural caffeine that comes from green tea extract that is a syrup, it comes in various flavors, and what you do with that is you put some of that in the bottom of the cup, and then you put in your ice and your club soda, and then you put syrup of whichever one you want, a little bit of cream if you'd like, mix that all together, and that's your Lotus. Now, the same thing with Italian soda, the only thing you do differently is you don't put the Lotus stuff in the bottom of the cup. Yeah, with your Italian sodas, they're so easy, like for birthday parties even, you could fancy it up for your kids and have an Italian soda bar, and all it is is you could go to the grocery store and grab a few bottles of different fruity flavors and pour them on ice, and then fill it with carbonated water, like club soda, and then you can top it off, float a little bit of whipping cream on it. The kids love it. You don't even need to do it for the kids, you can do it for yourself too. Yeah, you can. Yeah, it's just a couple shots of your syrup over the club soda on ice. It's easy peasy. The other one too is there's Red Bull drinks now that people make, and for anybody that likes Red Bull, they'll like this one. So what you do is you take your syrup, again, whether it's strawberry, pomegranate, whatever you like. Are fruitier ones better with that? Yeah, you wouldn't really want to do a chocolate or a caramel, or maybe vanilla would be good, but I wouldn't recommend a chocolate or caramel. However, different strokes for different folks, right? Whatever you enjoy. If you want to do that, do it. But anyway, you take whichever syrup you like, you put that in the bottom of the cup, and it's the same thing as exactly as a Lotus, except for instead of club soda, you use Red Bull. And then when you get to the top of the cup, you can put in either cream or you don't put in any cream at all. Interesting. It's the same thing as an Italian soda or a Lotus drink, except for it's got a different beverage in there. And it's the same thing that goes for coffee. Most of them are the same, except for slight changes in each of them. Yeah, pretty much, yeah. And it all has its building process to get from the simple espresso all the way up to something like a macchiato or a frappe or a cappuccino. Yeah, I think hopefully we can take the intimidation out of some of this out and have somebody out there in the listening world shine and have a really nice little get-together with friends and make homemade coffeehouse beverages in their home. Well, coffeehouse beverages, I encourage people to go to them, especially the local ones, because it is a place of business and it's always good to support local business. I agree with that. But what I also understand at the same time is right now things are tight for a lot of people all across the board. And having to go to a coffeehouse every day, which some people enjoy to do, and spend seven or eight bucks, let's just say five to ten bucks is what you can expect to spend. Because I've seen Red Bull to Refreshers or Zingers or whatever they want to call that upwards of thirteen dollars for a large. You know, so say anywhere between five to thirteen bucks. You could serve four of your best friends at your own house for that, less than that. Exactly, that's what I'm getting at. If you make it yourself, you're eliminating the coffeehouse needs and you're also saving yourself a lot of money. And it's fun. It's fun to have that engagement and interaction with people. And for a lot of people it's something that's completely new to them. So yeah, it is going to be fun, especially in the beginning. So have as much fun as you want with it. It's really an artistic craft. Yeah, craft. Yeah, totally. I agree with you. And then to potluck it, you know, women like to do that. And a lot of women get together with their kids, you know, on the weekends when they got days off. And they could do a little Italian soda party for the kids and then they can have their coffee beverages. Yeah, it's literally designed for everybody. Yeah. That's the great thing about it. That's the awesome thing about it. And I'm so glad that you came up with that cold brew concept for Mojo Roast. That's amazing. Well, should we tell the people how it actually started? Well, we could. You know, you said one day, I wonder how we could make cold brew better because it's a great trend going on and it has been for years. And you're like, I wonder how we could do that. And I came up with the idea of, well, you're going to need a pouch this size by this size and you're going to need X amount of ground. We won't tell the people that because it's kind of prietary information. But it's a lot of hard work for me and anybody else. Anybody else will probably figure it out in five minutes. But it's a great concept because we eliminate all of the mess in the process. Yeah. And it's very, very reasonable. That's the thing, trying to save the consumer money by giving them a quality product. But it's, I think it's absolutely genius you came up with the pouch and anybody that goes to MojoRoast.com can actually get the cold brew and get in the jar and they can get the refill pouches or if they have a quart jar at home, they can buy a bag of the refill pouches. And they can do all of that at home too. And the other thing for people that don't want to do the caffeine, we have decaf options too. We can tailor make anything to do with coffee, with roasted coffee for anybody's needs. I've done half caffs, quarter caffs, three quarter caffs. I've done everything to try it. One customer of mine wanted to have, you know, he had an issue with caffeine so I said, well, let's try three quarter caff and see how that feels. So we staged him up from a quarter and a half to three quarters and he called me the doctor of coffee. Well, you can't call yourself what a tailor is to clothing you are to coffee without actually doing it. Yeah. I agree with you. God help you if I was so unclothed. Oh boy, I'd be busier than I am now. But that's the thing. Our chief mission is to be able to provide people with an education and an understanding of this industry because it does seem like it's a very complex system and it does seem like it's very overwhelming. And companies aren't always necessarily transparent with their customers and we believe in transparency. That makes us the best at what we do as far as roasting coffee and providing for the consumer. Well, I feel like you're only as good as your consumer. That's right. If you have somebody that's really well informed, fantastic because then they know exactly why they're getting your product instead of just being like, well, why did you get it? I don't know. I just got it. Yeah. Somebody said it was good or something like that. At least you receive an education and an understanding of why we do what we do and how we do what we do. That's right. And how much we do appreciate every one of our customers. And I think just being a small business, we can switch up on the fly. It doesn't take us a year to change our offerings or what we come up with. It's basically, we say, okay, the consumer needs this. Let's provide it for them. Yeah. You got a long chain of command. It's either you or me. I'll say so. You know, it's that simple. Yeah. And boy, if we mess that up, we don't even belong in the business. No, it's kind of hard to fumble that up, but if we do, you're right. We should probably contemplate selling clothes instead of coffee. I would say so. Rio would make a heck of a tailor. I don't know about that. I don't even think I'd want to try. But if there's anything that all of you listeners out there would like to ask questions about, you can always email us at sales at mojoroast.com and we'll answer your questions. And if you need recipes, we have them and we're very willing to share with you to make you the best at what you do. And heck, even if we get enough questions, we might even do an episode where it's just strictly Q&As. Oh, I would love that. Come on, people. Let's start shooting them out there. You know, that would be fun and engaging for everybody, I feel. But, you know, I don't think that there's anything else that we really have to touch up on as far as the coffee drinks goes, other than the fact that we'll have to start a channel and actually showing you guys how to make these drinks. Because I think that once we're able to start showing you actually how to do it, it'll help to demystify the whole situation. Yeah, that's a very good way to put it. So with that being said, where can people find you? www.northdakotashop.com, www.shopnd.com. And for those of you that are North Dakota-based and don't know what Shop ND is, sorry to cut you off, but not really, because I feel the need to go over this. Yeah, okay. Go for it. Shop ND is a great platform for anybody that's looking to buy North Dakota-based products. And it was created during the pandemic times through UND, actually, University of North Dakota and Marketplace, which is out of Iowa. And it's just a great market for people to be able to go ahead and find their favorite North Dakota products. For anybody that's ever been to a trade show, it's exactly like that, except for an online platform. That's a really, really good plug for them. They're an amazing platform to be on, and we really appreciate the fact that we can be on that, too, with our products. And for any new purchaser, I'm sure they're still running the same promo as they have been forever. You get $10 off your first purchase. Yeah, and Father's Day, we're giving some good discounts, too. Yeah. Yeah. And then you can go to Facebook and Instagram, Mojo Roaster, and X or Twitter, Mojo Roast. And then there's, oh, the email, we have to put that at the end, too, in case somebody didn't have a pen and paper for it, sales at mojoroast.com. Shoot some questions our way. We'd love to answer them for you and make your coffee world a lot better place. There is one more thing I want to talk about. I saw this the other day, and it was Dunkin' Donuts. Uh-oh. And I'm not trashing Dunkin' or anything like that. No, we don't do that. No, don't get it misconstrued. I saw how they make their drinks, and I don't know if it was specifically for one individual, but it's a lot healthier to make it at home. I'll just put it that way. Oh, boy. How much sugar do you figure is in the average coffeehouse drink? It's a guess. It's a complete guess. How much would you guess? I would say probably, if you want one of those not sugar-free lattes or Frappuccino or Macchiato, and my best guess, I would say there'd probably be about six to eight tablespoons of sweetener in it. Let's see. Which one do you think has the most amount of calories in it, out of all these options that we went over? I would say Macchiato. Well, there's a Caramel Cappuccino Blast, 1,040 calories. Holy smokes. Well, the Macchiato is what I'm familiar with, and I think most of the people are, and that's got caramel sauce, which is the thick that you'd put over ice cream sauce, and it's got caramel syrup in it, and it's got your dairy or non-dairy in there. That thing, I think, would be loaded up. I think the thing that people got to be careful about is these shakes that have, like, for instance, 32-ounce with cream and caramel flavoring, which accounts for about two-thirds of people's caloric intake at 1,060 calories. Could you imagine eating a Big Mac or a Whopper and having a shake? I wonder why people need naps after eating that type of stuff. No kidding, but they do have sugar-free options, too. Oh, absolutely. I'm just looking at the worst-case scenarios. Oh, those are bad ones, guys. There's a lot of other options that aren't so terrible for you, but I'm just playing devil's advocate here, looking at the worst option. What do you think the best option is, the one that has the least amount of calories? Well, my favorite, if you have to have, if you're having an espresso drink and you have to have your dairy in there, I would go for a Brevi. But what type of dairy would you use? Me, myself, I just use heavy whipping cream. Is it half and half? I mean, half coffee, half cream? Well, mine's, get this, you get a 12-ounce cup from your coffee shop. Fill it up with 11.5 ounces of coffee. And then float some heavy whipping cream on it. That's about right, too. Leave a half an inch at the top and float the cream. That's what I do. I love that. Yeah. Yeah, if I'm going to have a treat. But typically, I just drink it straight up. But for the average person, I would say, you know, your dairy's not so bad. They've got all kinds of dairy alternatives out there. Personally, I love oat milk, but I wouldn't like that in my coffee or my iced coffees or fraps or anything like that. You'd be surprised. Yeah. I know. Your brother does that. He likes that oat milk in there. But, and I didn't like soy milk, and I can't stand almond milk, so those are two. I would say, I just hit the dairy, go all natural, or oat milk. Okay. Yeah. So that's your preference. My preference is just to have black coffee. Yeah. That's the way I drink it. You know how many calories that has? Two. Five, I think. I was going to say five, so I bet it's five. Well, you can't change that now. You already said two. Everybody heard you. I'm betting five. Five calories. You're correct. Yeah. But if you want a little flavor in your coffee, I would say get, you know, they have really good sugar-free options that aren't like the old sugar-free options that we used to have. Yeah. They've gotten a lot better. Yeah. So you've got, like, your monk fruit options for sugar-free, and you've got stevia. Some of the natural ones you have for those. And those are pretty good, too. But if you have to have a flavored one, I would go with that sugar-free. But everybody's got their different favorite coffees. That's right. Yeah. You know, mine's just a black cup of coffee. Somebody else's might be a cup of coffee with half sugar and half cream. I know a guy. And a little bit of coffee, you know. Yeah, I know him. It's interesting, because there's just so many different ways that we can enjoy this beverage that's been around forever. Exactly. And that's why it's so awesome to be able to make this stuff at home for a fraction of the cost, because you get to put whatever you want in it. The way you like it. And you don't get charged extra for extra. Yeah, that's right. Yeah. You know, it's your playground. It's your world. Everyone else is just living in it. That's right. Why as adults do we forget about playgrounds? Yeah. You know, everything can be considered your playground as long as you want it to be. Yeah, exactly. But, you know, it's been an informative yet, I would say, fun conversation with all of these different types of drinks. And like I said, it's just a matter of getting videos out there so people can see how to make them. Yeah. But with that being said, this is another episode of Coffee Break with Joe and Rio this time, we'll put it that way. Until next time, thanks everybody.