Our barista Mickey explains how to create a flower in the milk foam. Latte art requires some practice, but if you follow these instructions, you'll get there faster. The most important things in advance, you need cold milk, a wide cup and a cold milk jug with preferably longer, pointed spout. Latte Art works best with cow's milk, but we recommend oat milk as an alternative. Furthermore, you need a round cup with a large diameter, the larger the surface, the larger area you have for your latte art. Then the espresso is prepared, this should have a good crema, which does not collapse immediately, so that the milk foam can mix well with this.
Now the cold milk is poured into a preferably also cold milk jug. Foaming initially begins with the so-called "pull". This involves dipping the steam nozzle just below the surface. During this process, you hear the typical sound, a slight "scraping", whereby air is drawn under the milk, thereby increasing its volume. During foaming, you always have one hand on the milk jug to check the temperature.
As soon as the milk is hand-warm, you start with the so-called "rolling". To do this, insert the steam nozzle a few centimeters deeper into the milk. The milk should rotate in a circle, i.e. be "rolled". As soon as the milk jug gets too warm for you to hold it properly by the belly (at about 65 degrees), the foam is ready. In no case should you heat the milk above 70 degrees, this burns milk enzymes and a coffee prepared with this milk would taste sour. Immediately after "rolling", tap the pot a few times on a tabletop to let any remaining large air bubbles escape. Then immediately start pouring the coffee. First, leave some space between the pot and the cup, so that the first milk can get under the crema with momentum. When the cup is almost half full, bring the pot close to the cup and pour the foam in several movements from the bottom to the top of the cup.
After each movement, you start again. The foam that is already in the cup is automatically pushed more and more to the edge. Finally, draw a continuous line so that the leaves are connected. For a perfect success, we recommend our espresso house brand, Wild at Heart.