Weekly Wake-up
Basic Latte Art
Alright this is an easy one so lets keep it quick!
A heart on your coffee is always welcome and making it is actually quite easy once you get the hang of it, so lets break it down into steps.
Firstly you’ll notice that when pouring the milk into the espresso at a high height then the milk will be a thin stream leaving either no lines or very fine lines of white, where as when pouring lower down to the surface of the coffee the lines and shapes made by the milk are much thicker.
Step one:
Once your espresso is extracted and your milk is steamed, (see previous posts for any help on this) tilt your cup towards the jug and begin to pour the milk into the espresso from high up so no lines are made but the espresso is being diluted with the milk as shown below:
As you can see above, once the liquid has reached the lip of the cup you can stop pouring from high up and bring the milk pitcher down to the surface of the coffee. Begin to pour with more tilt to increase flow rate of the milk in the centre of the cup, this will create a large white circle of milk on top of the coffee’s surface as shown in the next image:
From here comes the most important part! You’ll need to now move the milk pitcher so your pouring more into the centre of the milk circle and move the jug upwards slowly at the same time, continue this movement all the way through the circle until your pouring abit past the circle and at a height similar to how you started the pour at the beginning. This process should look like how a plane takes off, moving forwards slowly and beginning to lift up gradually. The result is shown below.
That’s it! like I said, super simple!
Hopefully this has helped any of you home baristas or even newly working baristas to get this basic pattern down and which is a staple in many more complex patterns too.
Hope you have a great week and even better coffees!
