BRUCE WRIGHT
Miaflora Café and Garden Centre
WINCHESTER, SOUTH CANTERBURY
What do you do when you’re not making coffee?
I’m in the garden. While I do barista I’m not the barista at Miaflora. That’s my partner John. We’re a little bit isolated here but our point of difference is we’re a destination, we’ve got beautiful gardens – and I’m not just saying that, they are very beautiful – and we’ve got the garden centre and gift shop, and we’ve got a lovely creek that runs through, so people come here to enjoy the ambience and laze the day away. If I’m not in the café helping John I’m out working in the garden.
What’s your coffee order?
Flat white. That’s what I drink, John drinks a long black. I probably drink about four or five a day.
What’s the key to a great coffee?
The beans. It’s hard to make good coffee with bad beans. When we started Miaflora we went to many, many cafés and tried lots and lots of coffees and we found the café that used the beans that we have, Underground Coffee Roasters, were consistently good. It’s a lot easier to kill a coffee when it’s got bad beans – it takes a very good barista to make a good coffee out of bad beans.
Dairy substitutes, yay or nay?
Yes, but only oat and soy. With the others there’s too much waste. Round here we might only have one order for coconut milk every three days and it doesn’t keep that long, it’s not viable. We used to have almond milk but it went off too quickly so we changed over to oat milk. I don’t drink them though, they’re bloody horrible.
Decaf, yay or nay?
If people want it, not for me. If you’re going to have a coffee you’ve got to have some caffeine as far as I’m concerned.
Flavour shots, yay or nay?
Definitely not, it kills a good coffee. A good coffee can be quite sweet in itself if it’s made properly.
What’s the biggest coffee sin?
Heating the milk too much, it burns the flavour. This is something that people who have been used to drinking instant coffee want, they want hot coffee, they’re used to using boiling water. They want a hot coffee, but the quickest way to kill a coffee is to burn the beans.