Hi cappuccino- and coffeelovers of too much coffee,
I am ashamed of not introducing myself to you before as a member. But I am working in coffee roastery The Golden Coffee Box in the Netherlands and happy being able to read your sometimes wonderful discussions.
I am especially interested in single estate beans and ways of serving the best coffees.
Once a year I am asked by dutch newspaper AD to test coffees in restaurants which are opened all day. I am not allowed to test restaurants with coffees of The Golden Coffee Box or in our own coffeehouse.
If you want to read the whole coffeetest of 2006 (I am sorry, it is in dutch) you can read it on the internet using the following link:
http://www.ad.nl/koffietest/article747621.ece
I worked as the cupper for the newspaper AD. The AD made a good article with a lot of attention to ways of making better cappuccino. Through this link you can also see the test-rating of the particular day that the cafes were visited. The cafes were chosen by the newspaper or advised to the AD by readers in the months before.
I must say: It is a shame that out of 60 cafes only 4 were able to serve a ‘drinkable' cappuccino. Good things of the article were: Showing the coffeepleasure of the winning Café van Bleiswijk, the advise to leave the use of long life milk and use only fresh milk, and leave the use of cacao on the cappuccino or other ingredients.
This test is applauded and criticised. The test is very serious documented with temperature and pictures. The visited restaurants have the possibility to write a reaction in the newspaper. The newspaper underlines that the test has results from one moment.
If you would like to see pictures of cappuccinos that I hated during the test, I can give in a next comment the link to that page.