• Question: For the bar towel question.

    I think that's what it boils down to, barista responsibility. If I jump on bar and things are messy or my towels are milky, I will switch them out. Typically I like to keep the towels semi-wet with sanitary water just to eliminate drips and messes. Whenever I train, I always emphasize keep your bar and bar towels clean. It all comes down to a barista's judgement on the quality and cleanliness of the bar they are working on.

    Also try to "pump" the steam wand after every pitcher of milk I steam. So I press steam without the wand being submerged in anything, to get out any extra milk especially if I steam something thicker. At the end of each night, I put the steamer (not the temp wand) into ice and let it sit there over night. I think that helps keep the wand clean and makes me feel better about the bar I'm working on. - melovecoffee
  • Answer:

    Thank you for the response!

    Where I work - the procedure is to “blow out” the steam wand before steaming, and afterwards so that no milk sits in the wand, because when you turn the wand off in milk some gets sucked back up. At night, we have brushed to clean it out - and we take the tip of the wands off, get a pitcher of hot water and turn them on, and off in the water - which sucks hot water up into the steam wand and forces it to come clean, then we let the steam wand, soak in a pitcher of hot water over night, and we leave the tip off and just set it in the pitcher.

    But I agree with the rag thing - you just have to switch them out. And, I don’t know what everyone else uses but we use bleach - and after about two hours the bleach kind of just vanishes and if you pH test your rags, they won’t be up to health code standards.
  1. baristababble posted this