This Coffee Shop Red Flag Is One Of The Worst You Can Encounter

It's easy to be picky about your cafes. We all have certain tastes and expectations, but there are a few red flags that are objective and transcend your unique taste. Perhaps the biggest red flag when you're at a cafe is the cleanliness of the steam wand. It can often be hard to see in a lot of cafes, but if you can see it and it's not shiny and silver looking, proceed with caution. If you notice the barista is steaming up some milk for a latte or cappuccino, and they don't wipe the steam wand, maybe just leave. You can always try to brew coffee at home!

When you receive top notch barista training, one of the first things you learn is how to clean the steam wand. It's one of the few places in coffeemaking that can really collect bacteria, and a dirty steam wand will affect the flavor of the milk you're steaming. While stainless steel is one of the best surfaces and materials for things like espresso machines — it's non-porous and easy to clean — when milk is caked on to the steam wand, it creates the perfect surface for bacteria to thrive. Any good barista will wipe the steam wand, and purge it (turn it on for a few seconds) after each and every drink. If a cafe isn't taking care of the steam wand, who knows how dirty the rest of the shop is!

With the internet awash in negative, red flag articles — this one included — I wanted to focus on the one thing to look for in your cafe experience, and as a former barista of several years, I'd have to say it's care. If a cafe generally cares about any component of what it serves, you will probably have a decent to great experience. You can see care expressed in any number of ways, and enumerating them might help you decide what's most important to you.

If the service is consistently good, or just shockingly good, it means the baristas are well treated and cared for. If a barista is well cared for, they'll probably make consistently excellent drinks because, let's face it, it's not as though working a service job is great. If the cafe owner cares enough to make sure the barista is happy, they're already miles ahead of the average shop.

One sign I typically look for, and one of the parts I enjoyed about being a barista was sharing and spreading coffee knowledge. Whether that's how roast affects flavor, origins, processing or even what's the difference between a macchiato and cortado — a good barista won't mind (especially if it's slow or not a rush) imparting just a little bean of knowledge to anyone who cares.