"i'll have a soy, decaf, caramel latte with cream and an extra shot".

I spent the greater part of eight hours yesterday making coffee at my work.

So what makes a good coffee?

Well, it's all about the crema. Of course, this is getting into coffee-speak so I'll explain.

This is a beautiful extraction (coffee that is extracted from the ground coffee beans and compacted. Water runs through the compacted, ground beans and comes out thus) with an amazing crema. So, the crema is the stuff with the lovely golden colour which when settled, forms a layer at the top of the coffee in the cup. Get it?

Pictured above is a long black, which is as it sounds, black. And long because water is added before the extraction so it's not pure coffee! A coffee with milk, like a flat white or latte is a shot or double of extracted coffee with frothed milk. Milk is an art. It took me about a year to master the skill of frothing milk! Needless to say, I got pretty good at it.

Depending on the kind of coffee being made, so depends the kind of milk being made. Flat white is smoooth, with hardly any bubbles. Latte is about the same but in a mug not a cup. Cappuccino is lots of froth, not quite bubbles but thick and full. The kind of milk that will give you a moustache when you sip it! And hot chocolates? They're almost fool-proof. Just add chocolate powder with the milk and froth away. And finish with marshmallows! Just the best when you put them into the hot chocolate and they're melted by the time you finish.