WHICH CUPS PASS OUR BARISTA’S TASTE TEST?

who wins the battle of the best coffee? with the help of Marco Arrigo, head of quality at Illy coffee and owner of Italian coffee shop Bar Termini in London, LUCY hoLDEN tried a range of coffees from popular high Street shops to find out.

PATISSERIE VALERIE

104 outlets nationwide

ESPRESSO, £1.90

MARCO SAYS: Ordering an espresso is the best way to test coffee’s quality as you can taste just the beans, not milk. This is strong, but it’s got a rubbery taste. I’d guess some beans weren’t wholly fresh. 2/5

CAPPUCCINO, £2.90

MARCO SAYS: A cappuccino should be about a third foam, a third steamed milk and a third expresso. But here the proportion of milk to foam is too high. When I test with a thermometer, the temperature on the surface of the coffee is 60c, not only making it undrinkable but telling us the milk would have been burning at around 80c in the jug. It’s got a horribly floury flavour. 0/5

LATTE, £2.90

MARCO SAYS: A latte should consist of expresso and steamed milk with a thin layer of foam. There’s more foam on this than the cappuccino. Again, the milk is burnt, which tells me that the barista may not have been holding the jug while he warmed it to gauge the temperature. The barista really needs to be part of the process — those who aren’t are like chefs trying to cook a steak without looking at the frying pan. 0/5

CAFFE NERO

650 stores

ESPRESSO, £1.65

MARCO SAYS: Every time you move coffee around, you lose some taste — pouring from a shot glass to a paper cup or a china cup to serve, say — as too much contact with oxygen damages the flavours. That’s what’s happening here; they’ve lost the richness as a result. It’s very small. 2/5

CAPPUCCINO, £2.45

MARCO SAYS: Nero are all about big cups of coffee, but watching them try to fit large takeaway cups underneath the machine is like watching someone back a lorry into a car wash. We had to specify we wanted ‘ small’ — 8oz rather than 12oz gives you the correct ratio of coffee (one shot) to milk. I wish they wouldn’t mess around with such large cups. 3/5

LATTE, £2.45

MARCO SAYS: Technically this is made quite well. If they changed the settings on the machine to slow down how fast the water passes through the ground coffee (a process known as ‘extraction’), the taste would be richer. 3/5

LEON

47 outlets countrywide

ESPRESSO, £1.55

MARCO SAYS: Undrinkable. We could see they were using brushes to clean the part of the machine holding the coffee, which has the effect of brushing the used coffee around and blocking the holes needed to extract fresh coffee. Using hot water to clean it would make this taste better. 1/5

CAPPUCCINO, £2.40

MARCO SAYS: There’s a great foam on the top of this, it’s about 2cm thick and parts like soft meringue. It’s good quality milk, it’s holding the taste of the coffee. 4/5

LATTE, £2.40

MARCO SAYS: The bubbles are far smaller

than the cappuccino, which shows you the barista’s made them separately, aggressively frothing the cappuccino and frothing this one gently as it needs a thin layer. 4/5

WAITROSE

352 stores serving coffee

ESPRESSO, FREE

(with loyalty card and grocery purchase or £2 without) MARCO SAYS: Waitrose don’t do espressos so we ordered an Americano and whisked the cup away from under the machine before the water diluted the coffee so we could test its quality. I’m impressed. 4/5

CAPPUCCINO, FREE

(with card and purchase or £2.25 without) MARCO SAYS: Good amount of foam and a nice flavour of coffee coming through. F or me, this is quite a success, especially seeing as it’s from the middle of a supermarket. It’s at least as good as some of the ‘specialist ’ coffee shops. And the dozen people we’ve seen drinking it seem to think so, too. 4/5

LATTE, FREE

(with card and purchase or £2.25 without) MARCO SAYS: Shaving foam anyone? The machines filter the foam through such a tiny hole you get thick foam like icing from a piping bag. Saying that, the bubbles are lovely and fine. Plus it ’ s the cheapest and you can’t argue with that. 4/5

STARBUCKS

898 stores

ESPRESSO, £1.75

MARCO SAYS: I could tell this was going to be a shocker as soon as I saw the grinder . It’s greasy. Coffee beans give off carbon dioxide slowly. When they’ve done this they shine and at that point they’re dead. Greasy grinders full of shiny beans mean a funeral for coffee — that’s what we’ve got here. 0/5

CAPPUCCINO, £2.60

MARCO SAYS: This is nice and light with a good amount of foam. It’s almost half liquid and half foam. The problem is the coffee never really gets going . I’m not upset by it — it’s been made with some good intention but needs more liquid. 2/5

LATTE, £2.60

MARCO SAYS: This has been made nicely and the barista has done the best she can with the machine, which holds the milk and warms it up without the barista having to hold a jug. But it’s just not that nice. 2/5

COSTA COFFEE

2,326 stores

ESPRESSO, £1.70

MARCO SAYS: An espresso should be a good balance of acidity, sweetness and bitterness — when it’s missing one of those elements it means it’s been extracted in fewer than the optimum 30 seconds. Something has gone wrong; it’s muddy and a little too thick. 1/5

CAPPUCCINO, £2.65

MARCO SAYS: Good amount of foam and it’s not been over-boiled. The bubbles, though, are very flat. It’s disappointing. 2/5

LATTE, £2.65

MARCO SAYS: This is slightly better . What you can’t get away from is that missing hit of aromatic coffee that makes you want to breathe it in; it’s very bland. 1/5

PRET A MANGER

329 stores

ESPRESSO, £1.55

MARCO SAYS: You can tell immediately from the richer taste that they’re using higher quality beans. High Street chains don’t tend to pay more than £5 a kg for beans (a kg of Illy beans is £25). But they’ve served it before the longer drinks; it ’s been dying on the counter while we wait. 3/5

CAPPUCCINO, £2.35

MARCO SAYS: A sign of a good cappuccino is the weight. This is nice and light, with an inch of bubbles. They’ve done well. 3/5

LATTE, £2.35

MARCO SAYS: Full-fat milk here is carrying the taste of the coffee much better than we’ve seen elsewhere. Coffee is oily and needs to latch on to fat to taste its best. So we lose something when we order it with skimmed or semi- skimmed milk. Blue top milk is much better for you and has been proven to have more slimming effects. 3/5