POWERED BY VITASOY
Matthew Lewin is the 2019 ASCA Vitasoy Barista Champion and Café Ambassador for Vitasoy.
A barista’s guide to dairy alternatives: tips & tricks Matthew Lewin shares his top 10 tips & tricks for making the most out of your plant-based milks.
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’ve really enjoyed taking a deep dive into the world of plant-based milks in the past few columns and hope you’ve learnt something new along the way. Now that we’ve covered the ‘theory’ behind plant-based milks, this time around we’ll get straight to the practical things you’ll need to know when working on the coffee bar. Here are my top tips & tricks to help you master dairy alternatives in your café.
Matthew recommends using dairy alternative cartons with an airtight lid so they can be shaken each time before use.
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1. Have the right options available. More and more customers are becoming plant-based milk drinkers, but people often have different tastes and preferences. There are many options on the market and having too many can make service difficult to manage. If you have the ‘big three’ of oat, almond, and soy on your roster, alongside dairy and light/skim milk, you should be able to satisfy most customers.
The Vitasoy Café for Baristas range includes these three milks, which have optimal taste for pairing with coffee. They are also locally made and support the Australian community and rural farmers, as well as the barista championships. Having worked with Vitasoy for a while now, I’ve come to really appreciate their vision and goal to become widely known as the best plant-based milk for coffee. 2. K eep your milks cold, even after opening. During the morning rush, you’re likely to be going through bottles and cartons of several different dairy and plant-based milks. While it’s easier and quicker to leave them all on the counter for easy access, you don’t want them out of the fridge for more than a couple of minutes. Leaving them out too long becomes a food safety issue, but beyond that, room temperature milks don’t texture as well as cold milks. They won’t perform as well while you’re steaming and will lack clarity and sweetness in the cup. It also frees up bench space, giving you more room and flexibility to work, which balances out the speed benefits of having all the bottles and cartons out anyway. PRO TIP: Try to keep your milk jugs cold too. This helps keep the milk cold before you steam it and gives you more time to work with it.
