Hope it is ok to put this article here, the newspaper did a nice article about US Barista Champion Heather Perry. It includes a power point and video on how to pour latte art, including a cool Rosetta and a heart Rosetta. Thought this might be of interest to many of you home barista's who practice latte art.

http://www.pe.com/localnews/sbcounty/stories/PE_News_Local_D_barista31.3f595c2.html

From the article you can choose the power point or the video.

Mike

Great article! Thanks for posting it. It's good to see a true champion barista/latte artist at work.

Thanks for the link.

I don't know if this quote is going to get people excited about coffee though: "'This tastes like sweet mud'...she said."

"Her signature drink, Espresso in the Clouds, included steamed milk, infused with orange and lemon zest, cinnamon, ginger and vanilla bean. Perry prepared the mixture into a drinkable whipped-cream texture and then topped it with a rich, hand-whipped layer of espresso, egg yolk and brown sugar." Woah- is that like... breakfast?!

Interesting concoction. I was drooling (being a bit of a carb-o-phile) until I got to the egg yolk. Sounds like it's dropped in like you'd make a protein shake, but it cooks in the espresso?

Ray

You can watch the video of her performance in Japan at the WBC here:

http://zacharyzachary.com/2007/08...ion-heather-perry/

It looks like she whips the egg yolk and sugar up, then adds espresso and whips everything together and injects it through her cream mixture. Then she adds another layer of faux crema to the top. Looks tasty to me.

ckroaster wrote:the newspaper did a nice article about US Barista Champion Heather Perry.

Great video and nice article. Heather sure is smooth and makes it look so easy. It is interesting that she prefers the non-gicleured Linea; many other baristas like the more "forgiving" slow rampup to pressure provided by small-gicleur machines.

AndyS wrote:Great video and nice article. Heather sure is smooth and makes it look so easy. It is interesting that she prefers the non-gicleured Linea; many other baristas like the more "forgiving" slow rampup to pressure provided by small-gicleur machines.

Andy, I don't think that that is necessarily true. Shot started at 0:23 and finished at 0:39, plus it looked like both of the streams were curving inwards five seconds after she hit the button and the crema on the latte looked a lot lighter than the other coffees on the table. It looks more like it started flowing quickly because it was a dud shot. Mind you, it's pretty damned hard to get stuff to come out right on camera.

Cheers,

Luca

luca wrote:Andy, I don't think that that is necessarily true. Shot started at 0:23 and finished at 0:39, plus it looked like both of the streams were curving inwards five seconds after she hit the button and the crema on the latte looked a lot lighter than the other coffees on the table. It looks more like it started flowing quickly because it was a dud shot. Mind you, it's pretty damned hard to get stuff to come out right on camera.

Agree that it's hard to get it right for the camera; but the flow starts about 2.5 secs after she hits the brew switch, and Heather has previously talked about using non-gicleured Lineas.

[EDIT] Luca, you make a good point that the flow always starts fast if the grind is too coarse. I was assuming that with a 0.6mm gicleur the flow wouldn't start at 2.5 secs even if the grind was off. But I could be wrong, of course!

actually I'm curious- do you remember what she finds good about them? I'm on one but I'm still interested in the effects of it being restricted vs unrestricted.

ant wrote:actually I'm curious- do you remember what she finds good about them?

I'm not sure whether she found it good or just that she was used to it that way. Here's the thread.