Show off your barista skills: Latte Art

#1: Post by **LukeFlynn** » September 13th, 2015, 10:58 pm

I can't seem to find any up to date topic that relates to latte art showing off.. I figured this was a stretch for the "Post a pic of your home setup.." thread, so I figured I'd make a new one (I was proud of my pour tonight, and felt compelled to show it off to people that actually care about well presented coffee)

Probably my most well-centered and symmetrical pour in a long while, and wow did it taste good:

Let's compare this to when I first got interested in latte art, this is when I really started trying (Photo from January 9th, 2015):

I think I've done pretty great with so little practice making only 3-4 capps and lattes a day for.. 8-9 months. Now I'm going to stop bragging, it's your turn!

Let me know if you'd like a decently written tutorial on how I got to this point, possibly with pictures.

September 15th, 2015, 2:12 am

That's great, man.

One thing I noticed is your art is much like mine--it's lacking size. The one thing I learned from the class I recently took was that I was steaming the milk much hotter than I thought. It turns out I have a pretty high threshold for heat, and the temps I was heating my milk to were closer to 150. The absolute best temp is 130-135 and ever since stopping sooner, the flow has improved. My rosettas are now more full with greater contrast than before. Just that one thing made all the difference for me.

#3: Post by **dominico** » September 15th, 2015, 2:55 am

I have always thought it would be cool to develop latte art skills, unfortunately there are no milk-based coffee drinkers in my house, so all of the coffee I make is senza latte. If someone started a "Show off your tiger stripe crema mottling" thread I'd be all over that though!

September 15th, 2015, 3:00 am

You might have just invented another art form, Dominick,
...until I googled it and found this..

Wow!

September 18th, 2015, 3:45 pm

Temperature also helped me, except I started steaming hotter.. I used to steam to 130-135.. now I steam at 145-150, which for lattes is nice.. for capps I stick to lower temps.. I only use a thermometer on rare occasions.

Yeah, I often start too far towards the front of the cup, which limits the size of bulbs I can get.. I hear larger pitchers make it easier to get bigger designs as well.

#6: Post by **Hillel** » January 5th, 2016, 9:14 am

Hey everyone,

It's still hit or miss with my La Pavoni Europiccola, but when my milk texturing and espresso is full of crema, I'm happy with what I can achieve on this machine.

January 5th, 2016, 9:19 am

#8: Post by **forbeskm** » January 5th, 2016, 9:49 am

Hillel wrote:<image>

Hey everyone,

It's still hit or miss with my La Pavoni Europiccola, but when my milk texturing and espresso is full of crema, I'm happy with what I can achieve on this machine.

Wow, impressed for the la Pavoni, how big was the pitcher you used and how much milk? Was it a professional Pavoni or the regular small one?

#9: Post by **Hillel** » January 5th, 2016, 9:56 am

Beautiful art you got going on there. The jug that I use is a really basic regular old barista jug that is used for either 12 or 16 ounce drinks. My La Pavoni is a small 8 cup Europiccola. The fresher my beans are the more beautiful my drinks come out... I've read this everywhere but now I'm actually experiencing it: La Pavonis really perform at their best when the beans are at their freshest. What kind of a set up do you have?

January 5th, 2016, 10:02 am

Nice to see this topic getting some more activity, perhaps I'll post something later today.