How to Do Latte Art

Transcript Ryan Soeder: My name is Ryan Soeder. I work for Counter Culture Coffee. We’re a wholesale coffee roaster based in Durham, North Carolina. I work on the Customer Support Team in Boston. We are in the New York training facility right now. So, what we do. We’re predominantly a wholesale coffee roaster. We source …

Transcript So a fun way to add a little latte art is just to use food coloring in the milk. That way, the design you pour will be the color of whatever you choose instead of the normal white against brown. You could have a blue Rosetta or a green Tulip or something like that. …

Transcript All right, so this next one is how to etch a bear, like a little teddy bear face in a drink. What’s cuter than that? We’re just going to draw two dots, like a monk’s head, then a really small one underneath, just so we can put in the face. Then we’ll scoop some …

Transcript So this next one is a butterfly and it doesn’t involve any syrup. We’re just going to pour a monk’s head in the center of the cup and using the same pushing and pulling techniques we’ve learned previously, we are going to pull the design out on to a shape we can recognize. Alright, …

Transcript So here’s another fun etching design. We’re just going to draw a star in the middle of the cup, nice and framed, which just involves drawing a circle with the syrup, and then drawing the points outwards, and the inner part of the star inward. It resembles the spiral design, but is centered in …

Transcript All right, this next one is a flower. It’s very similar to the star, except we draw fewer points, and we’re going to pour a dot in the center to kind of offset that nice, dark syrup. All right, so the pour is just a monk’s head. We’re going to draw a circle on …

Transcript So we’ve etched some lines and we’ve etched some swirls, and now we’re going to draw a spiral from the inside of the cup out to the edge, and then take our tool and draw lines from the inside to the perimeter to give it a nice textured or pointy-shape. There’s something you might …

Transcript We’ve talked a little bit about etching and I’ve shown you how to etch a nice line pattern in the cup. And now, I’m just going to show you one more technique, as how to etch a swirl around the perimeter of a cup. All right, now since a swirl is a round design, …

Transcript A great place to start when you’re learning how to etch is to draw a few lines on the top of your drink. If it’s a mocha, that calls for a syrup on top. And then just push those lines and pull them around in swirls, or lines around the top of the cup. …

Transcript All right, so we’ve had a lot of fun with free pour so far. And again, that’s the drink that takes no more time than it would normally take to actually pour the drink for a customer in the first place. The next kind of latte art we can get into though is etching. …

Transcript So one of the final tricks you can use for free pour latte art, is, for a drink that requires a garnish, like Mocha, if you have Mocha powder, you can add it to the shot before you pour instead of afterwards and pour the latte art through it. This gives a really great …

Transcript So here is another free-pour tip. This one, instead of adding a border at the bottom of the design, adds some texture to the background, near the top of the design. It just involves pouring slightly on to the cup at the back, at the edge at the pool of liquid, right before you …

Transcript All right, let’s get into some tricks for pouring free-pour designs. These can be applied to any design you want, and the first one we’re going to talk about is adding a border to the bottom. Sometimes you’ll see when you’re adding a leaf to a design, the bottom gets a little lost, while …

Transcript The next design we’re going to do is the wreath. This is like a rosetta and is the first asymmetrical design we’re going to do. So instead of pouring in the direct center of the cup, we’re going to pour on the side. That’s going to spin the liquid in the cup, and it’s …

Transcript All right, so this next one is a fun one and customers go nuts for this guy, because it’s one of the only pieces of latte art that actually looks like something. A heart is very easily recognizable, but a rosetta looks kind of like a leaf, but it’s not really a leaf, one …

Transcript This is the wave into a heart. It’s another asymmetrical design that also has quite a bit of creativity involved. It’s a fun one. It’s kind of like the wreath and then we’re going to pour on the side of the cup and you get a current going in the cup. We’re going to …

Transcript All right, so in this next one, we’re going to put more than one rosetta in the cup. We’re going to aim for three, and this design was popularized by Hiroshi Suwatta of Japan. It’s his signature pour, so credit to him for this. We’re going to put one large rosetta in the center, …

Transcript So our next design is the rosetta. It incorporates all of the principles of the previous designs, except we add motion for the first time. We’re no longer just staying in the middle. We’re going to pull back slightly at the back, at the very end of the design, to draw a leaf pattern …

Transcript So here is a fun variation on adding layers to tulips. You can stack them on top of each other like we seen or you can fold them inside one another. So in this variation we are going to pour a base. We are to pour two layers one inside the other and top …

Transcript The cool thing about tulips is there are so many variations.In this next one, we’re just going to add another layer to it. Instead of doing one rippled base with a solid heart on top, we’ll do a rippled base with a rippled inside layer, with a solid heart on top. You can just …

Transcript All right, so this next one is a tulip and tulip tends to be described, as more of a category now. It’s a way to stacking dots or monk’s heads, on top of one another to create a really cool wraparound effect. You don’t see the basic tulip much anymore, but you’ll kind of …

Transcript In this next one, we’re going to learn how to pour a heart inside of a rosetta. We’re going to start by pouring the rosetta and then instead of drawing all the way through at the end, we’re going to drop down in the middle and pour a heart before drawing the rest of …

Transcript So we’re building these skills in stages and the next line we’re going to pour is the rippled heart. So first we poured the monk’s head, which was the solid dot, then we added the draw through, which turned the monk’s head into a heart, and now we’re going to add a ripple effect, …

Transcript So the next line we’re going to do is the solid heart. This is just like a monk’s head. We’re going to introduce one more design element though, and that is the draw through. It’s an element that is ubiquitous to most designs. It’s where at the end, where you pour a monk’s head, …

Transcript The first design we’re going to pour today is a monk’s head, which is just a dot in the center of the cup, really crisp and nice. We’re going to incorporate a few tips and tricks into this one, just to show you some things I’m going to be doing that really help me …

Transcript The first kind of latte art we’re going to talk about today is free pour. Again, this is like the working barista’s type of latte art. You’re pouring it as you’re making drinks for customers. It takes no more time to pour a free pour design than it would be to pour a drink …

Transcript Now again, something to be concerned with here is that, we’re not just making latte art. We’re making drinks, so espresso is a vital component of that. We want to make sure that this is tasting as good as it possibly can be, before we start pouring latte art into it. Again, you don’t …

Transcript So, how to steam milk. It’s important to realize, first of all, that you don’t steam milk any differently for latte art than you would to make a really good beverage. Again, I’m not a latte artist, I’m a barista. So, our predominant focus and our number one goal here is to make a …

Transcript The only thing you really need to do latte art is milk, and you need some espresso to pour into, of course, and a pitcher to pour with. For free pour you don’t always need a pitcher with a spout, but it really helps if you want to be manipulating the lines or creating …

Transcript So there are several different types of latte art, but something that’s important to understand is that any time that you are intentionally combining the espresso and the milk in a way that is intentional, it is purposeful, you’re creating latte art. Literally if we’re breaking that down, we’re saying that it’s milk art. …

Transcript No one really knows where it actually got started. Conceivably, it happened and began in Italy. It really gained prominence in the U.S. through David Schomer, from Espresso Vivace in Seattle. The late 80’s/early 90’s was when he first started discovering it and really getting into it, and began teaching latte art classes, and …