We have a Gaggia Classic at home. We’ve been making espresso and latte for 10 years. It’s been a great investment.
In the last 5 days we’ve been doing our regular iced latte routine of making them the night before and chilling in the refrigerator. A little simple syrup, oat milk and 2 shots. The problem is that when we drink in the morning the latte tastes like seaweed or shrimp and not in a good way. We’ve had to drain pour our coffee. First time this has ever happened to us.
I use a hard plastic glass and my wife uses a metal tumbler. Weird thing is if we make espresso it tastes fine. I tasted the simple syrup and oat milk individually and no problems there. When I make the same exact latte in the morning with no refrigeration it tastes fine but only in the plastic glass. We think there must be some type of weird chemical reaction occurring when refrigerating? Any guesses or ideas?
I’m cleaning out our grinder tonight and getting new beans to see if that was the issue. The coffee beans were from Birdrock. We love this roaster but maybe there is something off with the beans?
Yes we’ve thought that time and metal could be culprits. Since we’ve been making lattes this is the only time it’s ever happened. I am going to try different beans but its surprising that this batch of beans could be so different/more acidic than any other bean we’ve drank in the past decade. We did switch to oat milk in the last year so the idea of not enough fat to balance out the acidity makes sense. Anyhoo I hope its an easy fix.
Interesting!! I make cold brew myself. I use reusable tea bags and 24 hours in the fridge. It makes the best coffee and really brings out those the awesome notes in the fancy beans. I use Trader Joe’s Brown Sugar Oat Milk Creamer, sometimes Terroni Syrups I pick up at Homegoods.
I used to use an Agua Fresca Bucket to make it, but sometimes I didn’t finish it in a week. Now I use a small glass cocktail pitcher.
I think we figured out the issue. It’s the temperature of the hot espresso mixing with the oat milk/simple syrup mixture. Initially we thought the issue was with the beans. Now we think it might be the oat milk. We use the full fat regular Oatly. Maybe they have a new formula?
This morning we made the latte with simple syrup, oat milk and lots of crushed ice. We poured the espresso over the ice mixture and the latte was delicious.
Confirming that some mix of temperature, this batch of Oatly and coffee is causing this terrible taste. My wife left a little bit of her coffee in her car before work. Tasted the remaining coffee after work and had the same awful seaweed flavor.
