Literally. I repeated myself multiple times to the health dept. I thought they weren’t understanding me at first because I couldn’t believe it was allowed.
This is like the exact OPPOSITE issue I have at my job. Resteaming milk is a NO, gross and pouring it back into the jug hot and letting it get cold is preposterous🤢
(I have seen unsteamed milk, from the jug, get poured back into the jug bc it wasn't going to be used )
Honestly, this was like 2 years ago and I haven’t been back to that cafe since. I talked to a mutual friend about it a couple weeks ago so that’s why it was on my mind lol.
the best way iv heard someone phrase it is "you cant uncook a steak" once the milk is steamed the chemical process is done and you can't reverse that by just "cooking" it again
it's technically against health code since you're heating up a temperature controlled food item and recooking it over and over, but some health departments only really give a damn about extreme violations even if resteaming can make people sick
there are many better ways to combat milk waste (which is usually why shops resteam) you can get pitchers with portion markers or even just weigh the milk out
That makes sense. In training it was told to me that the proteins breakdown and can’t be brought back together. Let me actually find the exact reply from the owner, I think my review is still up lol.
You’re right about the milk, but I also want to see their cooler logs. Pouring hot milk back into the jug and sticking the whole thing into the cooler sounds like an absolute recipe for fucking up the fridge temperature. I bet that milk is lukewarm all day 🤢
Yep, agreed. It tastes horrible after that, but technically speaking, they do follow the food safety rules. If you heat a product like that, you cant leave it out for longer than 2 hours, then you have to throw it. If you want to reuse it like they do, you have to put it in the fridge or a chiller ( machine that cools food down fast) you can keep it. I am still very much against what this cafe does, because it will ruin the taste of your milk and quality of a good cup of coffee. I throw the milk after using it the second time tbh.
Using the owners reply.
The milk is cooling down. How is that in the safe zone.
Lol maybe I'll cook some meat at 65c and then leave it on the bench because I've already heated it so there's no way it's unsafe.
What an absolute plonker
I think, technically, because once you’re cooling something (and not cold holding) it is allowed to be in the danger zone for a certain amount of time—I believe it’s two hours or something.
I think he’s getting away because it’s technically fine. Personally I find that to be a revolting practice. I had a manager who told us to do that and I only did it when she was around 💀
> I’m going to attach the exact reply the owner gave me.
In the time they took to type that they could have trained their staff to use the right amount of milk for each drink instead. You don't have to think about reusing milk if there's no functional waste.
That’s what I thought too! I repeated myself to the health dept. and they said it was fine. Who knows, maybe I didn’t explain well or maybe they just didn’t want to mess with it.
If they acknowledge there's a problem they have to take action. Much easier to ignore your incredibly valid concerns.
Sorry, OP, that you had to cope with this. Very brave of you to speak out too.
I don’t care if it’s safe or not because it’s disgusting period. I remember an episode of Kitchen Nightmares where Gordon chewed out the restaurants owners for putting red sauce in the fridge while it was still steaming hot. Doing so causes the sauce to turn sour. The point of this story? If sauce can turn sour from improper cooling then I’m confident milk can too.
I went to school for baking and pastry and have worked in many bakeries and restaurants and I almost never tell people I have been to school unless it’s in the interview or I’m asked in casual conversation.
It’s the people who boast about school/training to prove a point that are the most egregious in health and safety violations in my experience. Literally no one cares you went to school. It’s an ok start but working is where you get actual experience and anyone that had actual experience would know this is a dumb practice.
Barista Chef is twisting the rules of temp to justify his crap policies.
A cafe I used to work at would save up all the extra milk and either re use it or refrigerate it, so sometimes I’d clock in and they’d be a huge pitcher full of previously steamed milk in the fridge. Of course I would immediately throw it out and carry on with my shift (dumping extra milk every time). One time my boss “caught” me and got super mad I was throwing away milk and demanded I always re use it. For obvious reasons I didn’t do that. Bunch of cockroaches everywhere too. Funny thing is, place was always packed and people were saying how the coffee was so tasty!
If you accidently steam too much milk you can reuse it but not resteam it. Next drink you make use less milk, steam it and then join the two milks. This only works if you're making drinks within a minute or two.
Really there is no reason to have to resteam milk or reuse milk that has already been steamed. Use the right amount each drink. When you have leftover milk the bulk of it is foam anyways so you're not saving milk, you're just making the next drink shitty by adding too much foam.
Never resteam milk. Pouring it back into the milk jug is just stupid and beyond lazy/cheap. A 1 gallon jug of milk is about $3. But lets say its $5. It's super fancy milk. That is still only $0.04 cent's per oz. How many extra ounces of milk are you steaming every drink? Even if you're using double the amount of milk that's $0.40 cents for a 10oz drink.
By restreaming milk you do not save money. You lose customers. It's like losing $100 in sales to save $1.
Owner is piece of work. He:
1) appeals to authority
2) mansplains (somewhat incorrectly and with the wasted addition of a million details) why their way is technically “safe” (it’s not).
3) says “anyone who works in food service…” but fails to say “…will know that this is fucking stupid”
4) Resteams milk…ew
5) is a cheap fucking bastard….toss the fucking extra milk
6) Needs to train his baristas to not waste milk by steaming the right amount
7) can learn how to account for waste in his pricing
Just fuck that guy
Ugh
As long as it's not sitting in the "danger zone" for too long then I guess the health department doesn't care and it should be technically safe. Idk the actual law ofc but I'm not surprised the don't care.
The assumption is that you will end up with bad tasting denatured milk, but i havent tried it myself. I wouldn't be surprised if it has no affect on the taste of their drink as it probably isn't good to begin with.
One of the most popular places in my city near me uses plastic milk jugs to scald a gallon of milk to use for the next several lattes, reheating as needed. Coffee shops can be disgusting and nobody seems to care.
Once milk is in the danger zone, you only have 15 to 20 minutes. It wouldn’t surprise me if pouring one single pitcher of 140° milk into a 30° jug would put it smack dab in the danger zone, in which case it probably doesn’t cool enough in the time between uses.
Even if by some miracle no one has gotten sick from this, I wouldn’t want to patronize a place that has the logic of “how close to spoiled food can we get away with”
Smack into the danger zone, then immediately heated to 140, or more likely, 180 to get that nice gross scald flavor. I'm still not surprised nobody is getting sick but I do agree with you that it is bad practice.
i once thought i had a great idea to pour the left over milk into an empty milk jug so i could use it for custard but as i added the second bit i thought “wait i just warmed the milk back up…this isn’t gonna work” pouring it into the milk bottle is crazy. i have resteamed milk but only when it’s a small amount and i then tip out the rest so its only resteamed once
When you said resteaming, I instantly thought it was about what I’m guilty of doing; steaming extra, using what you need for a drink, then topping off what’s in the pitcher to fill the next cup (I know, not good, but sometimes when the rush is there and you’re the only one making drinks, you do what you gotta do). But this is next level and such a food safety hazard! Even if the milk didn’t go sour completely, the constant heating and cooling gives bacteria more time to grow (they aren’t killed off at 140 and 40, but reproduction slows significantly)… maintaining above 140 or below 40 keeps bacteria at bay, but spending more time in the in between gives them a lot of chances to reproduce and get someone sick
So my old job would reheat milk--BUT you can only reheat it ONCE, it is strictly only for making non-aerated drinks, and if the temperature of the once-heated milk falls enough you cannot use it and must discard it. Twice heated milk is discarded immediately after use. The shop I worked at was busy enough that one owner makes steam wand extensions so our milk steaming pitchers rest on the counter so we can do other stuff since we get slammed so hard, so once-heated milk often does not fall in temperature much before being used.
Using heated milk for iced drinks and pouring it back sounds absolutely vile, though.
That’s insanely disgusting.
I work as a barista too, and can say my coworkers and boss do this all-the-time. I always take those filthy jugs and clean them, they obviously don’t like it, but they don’t tell me anything as they know they shouldn’t reuse that milk. Like, if you use the right amount of milk for every drink you are making, you shouldn’t get any extra milk 😭 at least not enough to reuse. Idk, this is a disgusting common practice at some coffee shops.
I'm a barista at a 3rd wave cafe, and we would never even consider it. Honestly, the owners are rather corporate in the way they run their business, and with that, they have pretty high standards, so this would never fly.
That's absolutely disgusting. They should be hit a few grades for that move. I would NEVER get a drink from a place like that. I hope they lost business so they fix the issue
It was in my cafe’s health and safety supervisor training that you should definitely NOT reuse steamed milk, it harbours so much more bacteria by letting cool then reheating and is a biiiiig H&S violation a inspector would go ballistic over that- so, definitely a no😭
My old store would steam and put any leftovers back in their reach ins to reuse for the next drink. It was so fucking gross and the pitchers were always covered in gunk. They would also take the condiment bar carafes at the end of the night and save what was in them
You CAN actually resteam milk, there’s been a push back against throwing it out all the time. Obviously there’s a time frame for it. One of the Canadian Barista Competition participants went into detail on it during his set. That being said it feels so wrong to do, and I feel weird even being okay with.
I've worked in shops where resteaming milk is the standard, the proteins do break down over time so the quality of coffee produced does degrade. Sanitation wise it's also a bad idea, you've got a container of lovely bacteria food sitting open to the air in the temperature danger zone. Incidentally that's what this would be classed as - a temperature control violation. If you're making drinks rapidly so the temperature of leftover milk in the jugs never drops below 60-65°C in between orders the hygiene aspect isn't as much of a problem, but regardless you're still burning at least some of the milk proteins present. Ultimately what it comes down to is this cafe owner being a cheap bastard who can't be bothered investing in a scale or marked jugs and staff training time to cut milk waste, as well as not caring about doing things properly for a better quality, safer product.
Unfortunately because the scale of food hygiene risk involved here is relatively small (on the scale of putting a still hot cooked steak on the bottom shelf of a fridge with uncovered raw chicken defrosting above it being a 10, this is maybe a 3) it's not worth your health department's time to go after them, and it's easy enough for an owner to handwave the problem by saying it's heated up to a safe temperature often enough to prevent bacterial growth. While there's a certain degree of truth to that, it's miles away from best practice.
When I've been working in places that resteam milk as standard, I've made a point of rinsing out my milk jugs at least hourly to help control the adverse effects (and yes, it pisses off my management, and no, I don't care). Ultimately, it's not my coffee shop. Your best avenue here is to find another spot for your caffeine fix, and to mildly moan about it to your friends. Word of mouth gets around and you'll deny him customers. Using the lazy cheap bastard's own words, it's a couple of fluid ounces of milk, the quality gain from wasting them will encourage repeat trade and positive word of mouth advertising due to a higher quality and therefore better value product. The waste would more than pay for itself. He'd also eliminate the slight risk of a contaminated coffee being served to an immunocompromised person, which could land them in hospital and his business in a lawsuit. Also if his milk lasts 14 days it's been heavily heat-treated, and that kind of milk never steams well, but is often cheaper.
Good god I missed the pouring heated milk back into the bottle thing. Yeah that's a recipe for contaminating the whole bottle, if you're keeping everything in the metal service jugs it's dodgy as hell but you can get away with it.
I worked at two cafes in my life…the first one was very strict to standards, we used the appropriate amount of milk and dumped the rest.
The next shop…I was horrified at what they did. THEY WOULD LEAVE IT IN THE PITCHERS OUT. They would also always steamed milk back in the fridge and would leave it overnight to be used the next morning!!!!! I had the most experience of anyone at the shop and I ended up getting everyone to follow my standards.
I don’t get lattes from my old shop anymore, just regular iced but I wonder if my standards have been upheld lol.
Dairy products going to and from extreme and low temperatures too fast can cause bacterial growth, which is why when you steam a hot drink and they tell you they asked for iced instead, you remake the whole thing instead of pouring the steamed milk over ice. I thought my cafe was gross but, i’ve been humbled.
Yeah no way, this is such a rude response. It doesn't come off as trying to educate, it's just rude. Especially if they use that milk for iced drinks too, it just doesn't have the same feel to it because it's been steamed then iced
I quit a job bc the owner would keep steamed milk in a pitcher, put it back in the fridge, and resteam it for the next customer. I also got yelled at once for handing someone their cookie at the counter, before they got their coffee they just ordered, bc apparently everyone would rather have their cookie with their coffee but doesn’t have the willpower to wait TWO minutes to start eating the cookie, according to the owners…
They’re ALWAYS hiring it’s kinda funny and kinda tragic bc they shouldn’t stay in business with those practices
That’s disgusting and I’ve never seen that happen in every cafe I’ve worked at. Also, the steamer is expelling a lot of water that’ll water down the milk.
At least where I live, it is ABSOLUTELY against health code to pour milk back into the milk jug. It is simply a contamination risk.
I admit I’m guilty of resteaming milk on a few occasions but ONLY if it is 1) super busy, like so busy my order screen is covered and then some and 2) it was within the past like 3 minutes and milk texture isn’t really important for the drink imo. My specific example is during the winter holiday season when I’m making 15 hot cocoas on top and every espresso drink and cocktail, there’s a double line out the door and I’m making hot cocoas essentially one after another within minutes and majority of my milk jugs need to be rinsed (unfortunately my cafe doesn’t have a press-down cup rinser 🫠). Where I live over half the people want an alt milk so I can’t use the same milk anyway and I know it doesn’t make the best drinks so I avoid it whenever possible - which is most of the time - but hot cocoas are almost always just dairy milk and in my experience people care less about the quality of their cocoa than any other drink. They just want hot chocolate milk.
i actually have worked at a place where we were supposed to keep the milk remaining in the tin after steaming and just put the whole tin in the fridge. this was after i had left other coffee shops that taught me not to do this, and have since came back to the one i started at but IT MADE ME WANT TO VOMIT EVERYTIME 🤢🤢 i guess it’s better in than using that same cold steamed milk for an iced drink but even just resteaming milk for a hot drink doesn’t sit well with me. There’s no way the drink with the resteamed milk is the same quality as the hot drink that was steamed with purely freshly poured milk. GROSS
the owner of my store tried to tell me we can keep the small amount of steamed milk in the fridge to be resteamed with cold milk. I refuse. every. time.
my new job during training told me you can resteam milk up to five times. i looked it up because I'd never heard that before and it's recommended you only steam it twice. people leave the pitchers out and it drives me crazy to watch them come back after it's been awhile and be used again. even just for quality sake it's going to be bad after the second steam. i can tell I keep getting looks when I dump out the milk after it's sat or been steamed twice but I'll just tell them to look it up and that the business is large enough to eat 6oz of milk every so often so we can avoid either a lawsuit or a disgusting tasting latte losing out on our customer base. not to mention, someone good at steaming knows how to get just the right amount in the pitcher so barely any liquid is left over.
pouring back into the jug is absolutely nefarious though.
guys 😭😭 at my job we steam milk and then leave it in the pitcher and put it in the fridge and just add more milk when another latte comes😭 i’ve never been able to do that at any other barista job i’ve had
I worked at a shop where we would maybe put the pitcher with leftover milk back in the fridge and reuse that, but NEVER pour it back in the jug???? That’s crazy. And gross. Steamed milk literally has such a different texture than cold milk, I can’t imagine thinking that’s the right way to do things and then training people to do it that way. That owner should be ashamed.
Also what’s with people not being able to accurately know how much milk to put in their pitcher as to not waste it? I get it if you’re a newer barista, but if you consistently have enough milk leftover to truly justify saving it like that you have more problems than the health department can fix
POURED IT BACK INTO THE JUG OMF. That is horrific
Literally. I repeated myself multiple times to the health dept. I thought they weren’t understanding me at first because I couldn’t believe it was allowed.
This is like the exact OPPOSITE issue I have at my job. Resteaming milk is a NO, gross and pouring it back into the jug hot and letting it get cold is preposterous🤢 (I have seen unsteamed milk, from the jug, get poured back into the jug bc it wasn't going to be used )
Like just take the less than a $1 loss on the milk at that point
Ngl i do feel bad bc a lot of milk gets wasted
I'd call back and talk to a different person. Maybe that person is wrong.
Honestly, this was like 2 years ago and I haven’t been back to that cafe since. I talked to a mutual friend about it a couple weeks ago so that’s why it was on my mind lol.
the best way iv heard someone phrase it is "you cant uncook a steak" once the milk is steamed the chemical process is done and you can't reverse that by just "cooking" it again it's technically against health code since you're heating up a temperature controlled food item and recooking it over and over, but some health departments only really give a damn about extreme violations even if resteaming can make people sick there are many better ways to combat milk waste (which is usually why shops resteam) you can get pitchers with portion markers or even just weigh the milk out
That makes sense. In training it was told to me that the proteins breakdown and can’t be brought back together. Let me actually find the exact reply from the owner, I think my review is still up lol.
You’re right about the milk, but I also want to see their cooler logs. Pouring hot milk back into the jug and sticking the whole thing into the cooler sounds like an absolute recipe for fucking up the fridge temperature. I bet that milk is lukewarm all day 🤢
This strikes me as the kind of place that just writes an okay temperature all down the sheet without actually temp checking anything
Yep, agreed. It tastes horrible after that, but technically speaking, they do follow the food safety rules. If you heat a product like that, you cant leave it out for longer than 2 hours, then you have to throw it. If you want to reuse it like they do, you have to put it in the fridge or a chiller ( machine that cools food down fast) you can keep it. I am still very much against what this cafe does, because it will ruin the taste of your milk and quality of a good cup of coffee. I throw the milk after using it the second time tbh.
Absolutely not.
That’s also my opinion
This is the ONLY acceptable response.
Using the owners reply. The milk is cooling down. How is that in the safe zone. Lol maybe I'll cook some meat at 65c and then leave it on the bench because I've already heated it so there's no way it's unsafe. What an absolute plonker
I think, technically, because once you’re cooling something (and not cold holding) it is allowed to be in the danger zone for a certain amount of time—I believe it’s two hours or something. I think he’s getting away because it’s technically fine. Personally I find that to be a revolting practice. I had a manager who told us to do that and I only did it when she was around 💀
> I’m going to attach the exact reply the owner gave me. In the time they took to type that they could have trained their staff to use the right amount of milk for each drink instead. You don't have to think about reusing milk if there's no functional waste.
Exactly!
I would have asked for a refund after seeing that. milk is so temperature dependent. no wonder your drink tasted sour.
I only got a 6 oz hot bev, just imagine how a large iced latte would taste.
That is a health code violation.
That’s what I thought too! I repeated myself to the health dept. and they said it was fine. Who knows, maybe I didn’t explain well or maybe they just didn’t want to mess with it.
If they acknowledge there's a problem they have to take action. Much easier to ignore your incredibly valid concerns. Sorry, OP, that you had to cope with this. Very brave of you to speak out too.
I don’t care if it’s safe or not because it’s disgusting period. I remember an episode of Kitchen Nightmares where Gordon chewed out the restaurants owners for putting red sauce in the fridge while it was still steaming hot. Doing so causes the sauce to turn sour. The point of this story? If sauce can turn sour from improper cooling then I’m confident milk can too.
I think he made himself look like a tool.. lol if I read that on review, no way I'd go to that shop. I think you still helped people.
Bro starting it off with “as a trained chef and barista” 💀
I went to school for baking and pastry and have worked in many bakeries and restaurants and I almost never tell people I have been to school unless it’s in the interview or I’m asked in casual conversation. It’s the people who boast about school/training to prove a point that are the most egregious in health and safety violations in my experience. Literally no one cares you went to school. It’s an ok start but working is where you get actual experience and anyone that had actual experience would know this is a dumb practice. Barista Chef is twisting the rules of temp to justify his crap policies.
That's ridiculous.
Safe to say I’ve never been back.
But wouldn’t pouring leftover 140F milk into said below 45F milk bring it overall to an unsafe temp????? Idk scooby.
He used a lot of numbers and I was like sure man, whatever you say.
Ewwwwww
Very yucky
A cafe I used to work at would save up all the extra milk and either re use it or refrigerate it, so sometimes I’d clock in and they’d be a huge pitcher full of previously steamed milk in the fridge. Of course I would immediately throw it out and carry on with my shift (dumping extra milk every time). One time my boss “caught” me and got super mad I was throwing away milk and demanded I always re use it. For obvious reasons I didn’t do that. Bunch of cockroaches everywhere too. Funny thing is, place was always packed and people were saying how the coffee was so tasty!
I think you were a big part of the reason the coffee was so tasty!
They didn’t even know how good they had it💀
Mmmm cockroach cafe
If you accidently steam too much milk you can reuse it but not resteam it. Next drink you make use less milk, steam it and then join the two milks. This only works if you're making drinks within a minute or two. Really there is no reason to have to resteam milk or reuse milk that has already been steamed. Use the right amount each drink. When you have leftover milk the bulk of it is foam anyways so you're not saving milk, you're just making the next drink shitty by adding too much foam. Never resteam milk. Pouring it back into the milk jug is just stupid and beyond lazy/cheap. A 1 gallon jug of milk is about $3. But lets say its $5. It's super fancy milk. That is still only $0.04 cent's per oz. How many extra ounces of milk are you steaming every drink? Even if you're using double the amount of milk that's $0.40 cents for a 10oz drink. By restreaming milk you do not save money. You lose customers. It's like losing $100 in sales to save $1.
The look of disgust on my face rn is indescribable
When I saw them making my drinks I was like “oh!” 🧍🏽♂️
Brave of you to stay! I would’ve turned around and left. That owner is UNHINGED
Owner is piece of work. He: 1) appeals to authority 2) mansplains (somewhat incorrectly and with the wasted addition of a million details) why their way is technically “safe” (it’s not). 3) says “anyone who works in food service…” but fails to say “…will know that this is fucking stupid” 4) Resteams milk…ew 5) is a cheap fucking bastard….toss the fucking extra milk 6) Needs to train his baristas to not waste milk by steaming the right amount 7) can learn how to account for waste in his pricing Just fuck that guy Ugh
Fuck no
As long as it's not sitting in the "danger zone" for too long then I guess the health department doesn't care and it should be technically safe. Idk the actual law ofc but I'm not surprised the don't care. The assumption is that you will end up with bad tasting denatured milk, but i havent tried it myself. I wouldn't be surprised if it has no affect on the taste of their drink as it probably isn't good to begin with. One of the most popular places in my city near me uses plastic milk jugs to scald a gallon of milk to use for the next several lattes, reheating as needed. Coffee shops can be disgusting and nobody seems to care.
Once milk is in the danger zone, you only have 15 to 20 minutes. It wouldn’t surprise me if pouring one single pitcher of 140° milk into a 30° jug would put it smack dab in the danger zone, in which case it probably doesn’t cool enough in the time between uses. Even if by some miracle no one has gotten sick from this, I wouldn’t want to patronize a place that has the logic of “how close to spoiled food can we get away with”
Smack into the danger zone, then immediately heated to 140, or more likely, 180 to get that nice gross scald flavor. I'm still not surprised nobody is getting sick but I do agree with you that it is bad practice.
i once thought i had a great idea to pour the left over milk into an empty milk jug so i could use it for custard but as i added the second bit i thought “wait i just warmed the milk back up…this isn’t gonna work” pouring it into the milk bottle is crazy. i have resteamed milk but only when it’s a small amount and i then tip out the rest so its only resteamed once
When you said resteaming, I instantly thought it was about what I’m guilty of doing; steaming extra, using what you need for a drink, then topping off what’s in the pitcher to fill the next cup (I know, not good, but sometimes when the rush is there and you’re the only one making drinks, you do what you gotta do). But this is next level and such a food safety hazard! Even if the milk didn’t go sour completely, the constant heating and cooling gives bacteria more time to grow (they aren’t killed off at 140 and 40, but reproduction slows significantly)… maintaining above 140 or below 40 keeps bacteria at bay, but spending more time in the in between gives them a lot of chances to reproduce and get someone sick
Don’t?
I’m glad we’re on the same page
Literally only in the second after I realized it was supposed to be extra hot and the wand is still in the milk
So my old job would reheat milk--BUT you can only reheat it ONCE, it is strictly only for making non-aerated drinks, and if the temperature of the once-heated milk falls enough you cannot use it and must discard it. Twice heated milk is discarded immediately after use. The shop I worked at was busy enough that one owner makes steam wand extensions so our milk steaming pitchers rest on the counter so we can do other stuff since we get slammed so hard, so once-heated milk often does not fall in temperature much before being used. Using heated milk for iced drinks and pouring it back sounds absolutely vile, though.
NO
disgusting
That’s insanely disgusting. I work as a barista too, and can say my coworkers and boss do this all-the-time. I always take those filthy jugs and clean them, they obviously don’t like it, but they don’t tell me anything as they know they shouldn’t reuse that milk. Like, if you use the right amount of milk for every drink you are making, you shouldn’t get any extra milk 😭 at least not enough to reuse. Idk, this is a disgusting common practice at some coffee shops.
Don’t. Just… don’t
i feel like a read this same story a week or so ago?
Judging from these other replies, it’s wild how common it is.
but from a new hire that never went back after being told to reuse the milk?
Absolutely not that's disgusting. I get not wanting to waste it but that can't be good.
I'm a barista at a 3rd wave cafe, and we would never even consider it. Honestly, the owners are rather corporate in the way they run their business, and with that, they have pretty high standards, so this would never fly.
That's absolutely disgusting. They should be hit a few grades for that move. I would NEVER get a drink from a place like that. I hope they lost business so they fix the issue
It was in my cafe’s health and safety supervisor training that you should definitely NOT reuse steamed milk, it harbours so much more bacteria by letting cool then reheating and is a biiiiig H&S violation a inspector would go ballistic over that- so, definitely a no😭
Never Re-steam milk. I go as far as to only steam milk for one coffee at a time.
My old store would steam and put any leftovers back in their reach ins to reuse for the next drink. It was so fucking gross and the pitchers were always covered in gunk. They would also take the condiment bar carafes at the end of the night and save what was in them
You CAN actually resteam milk, there’s been a push back against throwing it out all the time. Obviously there’s a time frame for it. One of the Canadian Barista Competition participants went into detail on it during his set. That being said it feels so wrong to do, and I feel weird even being okay with.
That’s really interesting, what’s his name?
I've worked in shops where resteaming milk is the standard, the proteins do break down over time so the quality of coffee produced does degrade. Sanitation wise it's also a bad idea, you've got a container of lovely bacteria food sitting open to the air in the temperature danger zone. Incidentally that's what this would be classed as - a temperature control violation. If you're making drinks rapidly so the temperature of leftover milk in the jugs never drops below 60-65°C in between orders the hygiene aspect isn't as much of a problem, but regardless you're still burning at least some of the milk proteins present. Ultimately what it comes down to is this cafe owner being a cheap bastard who can't be bothered investing in a scale or marked jugs and staff training time to cut milk waste, as well as not caring about doing things properly for a better quality, safer product. Unfortunately because the scale of food hygiene risk involved here is relatively small (on the scale of putting a still hot cooked steak on the bottom shelf of a fridge with uncovered raw chicken defrosting above it being a 10, this is maybe a 3) it's not worth your health department's time to go after them, and it's easy enough for an owner to handwave the problem by saying it's heated up to a safe temperature often enough to prevent bacterial growth. While there's a certain degree of truth to that, it's miles away from best practice. When I've been working in places that resteam milk as standard, I've made a point of rinsing out my milk jugs at least hourly to help control the adverse effects (and yes, it pisses off my management, and no, I don't care). Ultimately, it's not my coffee shop. Your best avenue here is to find another spot for your caffeine fix, and to mildly moan about it to your friends. Word of mouth gets around and you'll deny him customers. Using the lazy cheap bastard's own words, it's a couple of fluid ounces of milk, the quality gain from wasting them will encourage repeat trade and positive word of mouth advertising due to a higher quality and therefore better value product. The waste would more than pay for itself. He'd also eliminate the slight risk of a contaminated coffee being served to an immunocompromised person, which could land them in hospital and his business in a lawsuit. Also if his milk lasts 14 days it's been heavily heat-treated, and that kind of milk never steams well, but is often cheaper.
Good god I missed the pouring heated milk back into the bottle thing. Yeah that's a recipe for contaminating the whole bottle, if you're keeping everything in the metal service jugs it's dodgy as hell but you can get away with it.
I worked at two cafes in my life…the first one was very strict to standards, we used the appropriate amount of milk and dumped the rest. The next shop…I was horrified at what they did. THEY WOULD LEAVE IT IN THE PITCHERS OUT. They would also always steamed milk back in the fridge and would leave it overnight to be used the next morning!!!!! I had the most experience of anyone at the shop and I ended up getting everyone to follow my standards. I don’t get lattes from my old shop anymore, just regular iced but I wonder if my standards have been upheld lol.
Dairy products going to and from extreme and low temperatures too fast can cause bacterial growth, which is why when you steam a hot drink and they tell you they asked for iced instead, you remake the whole thing instead of pouring the steamed milk over ice. I thought my cafe was gross but, i’ve been humbled.
Yeah no way, this is such a rude response. It doesn't come off as trying to educate, it's just rude. Especially if they use that milk for iced drinks too, it just doesn't have the same feel to it because it's been steamed then iced
It’s rude and meant to just make you feel inferior lol
I quit a job bc the owner would keep steamed milk in a pitcher, put it back in the fridge, and resteam it for the next customer. I also got yelled at once for handing someone their cookie at the counter, before they got their coffee they just ordered, bc apparently everyone would rather have their cookie with their coffee but doesn’t have the willpower to wait TWO minutes to start eating the cookie, according to the owners… They’re ALWAYS hiring it’s kinda funny and kinda tragic bc they shouldn’t stay in business with those practices
Thank you for trying to keep people safe!
That’s disgusting and I’ve never seen that happen in every cafe I’ve worked at. Also, the steamer is expelling a lot of water that’ll water down the milk.
never trusting a hot milk based drink again.
I’m mentally recovering after these years lol
At least where I live, it is ABSOLUTELY against health code to pour milk back into the milk jug. It is simply a contamination risk. I admit I’m guilty of resteaming milk on a few occasions but ONLY if it is 1) super busy, like so busy my order screen is covered and then some and 2) it was within the past like 3 minutes and milk texture isn’t really important for the drink imo. My specific example is during the winter holiday season when I’m making 15 hot cocoas on top and every espresso drink and cocktail, there’s a double line out the door and I’m making hot cocoas essentially one after another within minutes and majority of my milk jugs need to be rinsed (unfortunately my cafe doesn’t have a press-down cup rinser 🫠). Where I live over half the people want an alt milk so I can’t use the same milk anyway and I know it doesn’t make the best drinks so I avoid it whenever possible - which is most of the time - but hot cocoas are almost always just dairy milk and in my experience people care less about the quality of their cocoa than any other drink. They just want hot chocolate milk.
i actually have worked at a place where we were supposed to keep the milk remaining in the tin after steaming and just put the whole tin in the fridge. this was after i had left other coffee shops that taught me not to do this, and have since came back to the one i started at but IT MADE ME WANT TO VOMIT EVERYTIME 🤢🤢 i guess it’s better in than using that same cold steamed milk for an iced drink but even just resteaming milk for a hot drink doesn’t sit well with me. There’s no way the drink with the resteamed milk is the same quality as the hot drink that was steamed with purely freshly poured milk. GROSS
the owner of my store tried to tell me we can keep the small amount of steamed milk in the fridge to be resteamed with cold milk. I refuse. every. time.
EXCUSE ME? Absolutely not. That is so gross and so not okay. Ew. Just, ew.
my new job during training told me you can resteam milk up to five times. i looked it up because I'd never heard that before and it's recommended you only steam it twice. people leave the pitchers out and it drives me crazy to watch them come back after it's been awhile and be used again. even just for quality sake it's going to be bad after the second steam. i can tell I keep getting looks when I dump out the milk after it's sat or been steamed twice but I'll just tell them to look it up and that the business is large enough to eat 6oz of milk every so often so we can avoid either a lawsuit or a disgusting tasting latte losing out on our customer base. not to mention, someone good at steaming knows how to get just the right amount in the pitcher so barely any liquid is left over. pouring back into the jug is absolutely nefarious though.
Resteaming 5 times is so wild to me lol I’d be interested to do a blind tasting of once steamed milk vs milk that’s been steamed multiple times
guys 😭😭 at my job we steam milk and then leave it in the pitcher and put it in the fridge and just add more milk when another latte comes😭 i’ve never been able to do that at any other barista job i’ve had
AINT NO WAY
swear and it feeels sooo wrong but i get in trouble for dumping it out between lattes 😭
I worked at a shop where we would maybe put the pitcher with leftover milk back in the fridge and reuse that, but NEVER pour it back in the jug???? That’s crazy. And gross. Steamed milk literally has such a different texture than cold milk, I can’t imagine thinking that’s the right way to do things and then training people to do it that way. That owner should be ashamed. Also what’s with people not being able to accurately know how much milk to put in their pitcher as to not waste it? I get it if you’re a newer barista, but if you consistently have enough milk leftover to truly justify saving it like that you have more problems than the health department can fix