Nowadays, people are paying more and more attention to single-origin coffee, but in terms of ordering at FrontStreet Coffee stores, Italian coffee still accounts for the majority. When it comes to choosing Italian coffee beans, FrontStreet Coffee focuses on the flavor, mellowness, sour-bitter balance, etc. of the beans. FrontStreet Coffee has always believed that coffee is a very inclusive culture. It can simply show the flavor of a single production area, or it can mix multiple production areas to present a comprehensive flavor. In order to prevent the coffee flavor from being overshadowed by the milk flavor and to get along harmoniously with milk, FrontStreet Coffee will consider many factors such as the selection of Italian coffee bean varieties and the mixing ratio of coffee to milk.
The meaning of latte
Although Caffe Latte, which means milk and coffee, is Italian, this drink was not invented in Italy. The origin of latte coffee can be traced back to the war between the Turkish Ottoman Empire and Vienna. In 1683, the Muslim army of Mohammed IV besieged Vienna. The war situation was urgent. The Christians trapped in Vienna decided to ask for reinforcements from Poland. However, they had to find a messenger who could speak Turkish first before they could hide it from the Turkish army outside the city. Fanz George Kolschitsky, a Viennese who had been doing business in Turkey for many years, volunteered to join the battle. He deceived the enemy with his fluent Turkish and swam the Danube to the King of Poland for help. The Christian army arrived in Vienna and drove away the Turks.
The Turkish army retreated in panic but left behind a large amount of supplies, including gold, cattle, horses, camels, and dozens of sacks of coffee beans. At that time, the people in Vienna did not know what the coffee in the sack was and thought it was livestock feed. Therefore, when discussing merits and rewards, no one paid attention to the humble coffee beans. Only Kochisky moved all the coffee beans because he had lived in Turkey and knew how to make a lot of money from coffee beans.
He then opened a Blue Bottle Cafe (Blue Bottle). At first, he brewed coffee according to the unfiltered method of the Turks. However, the Viennese people were not used to drinking the thick and burnt Turkish coffee with coffee grounds. Kochiski had an idea and used a cloth to filter the coffee grounds, and then added milk and honey. It became a new refreshing drink, which was very popular among the Viennese people. This was also the first time milk was combined with coffee, sometime between the late seventeenth and early eighteenth centuries. The technology at that time was not enough to invent high-pressure steam milk foaming equipment, but Kochiski's idea of adding milk to coffee also allowed for more diverse ways to drink coffee, becoming the ancestor of today's Caffe Latte.
The Blue Bottle Cafe has also become the most classic coffee house in Europe. Many famous painters used it as a painting genre. Vienna still has many paintings of Kochisky entertaining guests by painters, which shows how popular the Blue Bottle Cafe was at that time.
Latte Coffee (Latte Coffee) Because latte (latte) means fresh milk in Italian. In the English-speaking world, it generally refers to coffee brewed with hot fresh milk. The French word lait is synonymous with the Italian word latte, both referring to milk. Latte Coffee is the so-called coffee with milk, usually directly translated as "latte coffee". As for Cafe au Lait in French, it means coffee with milk. Most people call it "Coffee au Lait" or "Coffee au Lait".
It wasn't until the 1980s that the term latte was used outside of Italy. The ingredients of a general latte are one-third espresso and two-thirds fresh milk, and generally no milk foam is added. It has more of a milky flavor than cappuccino. The ratio of coffee: milk: milk foam in latte is 1:2:1.
Latte is a classic mixture of Italian espresso and milk. Italians also like to drink latte as a breakfast drink. In Italian kitchens in the morning, coffee and milk are usually brewed at the same time on the stove that is exposed to sunlight. Italians who drink latte do not so much like Italian espresso as they like milk, and only espresso can bring an unforgettable taste to ordinary milk.
Italian style latte
Italian-style latte (Caffe Latte) requires a small cup of Espresso and a cup of milk (150-200 ml). Latte has more milk and less coffee, which is very different from Cappuccino. Making latte is extremely simple, just pour nearly boiling milk into freshly made Italian espresso. In fact, there is no set rule for how much milk to add, and you can freely adjust it according to your personal taste.
If you add some frothed cold milk to the hot milk, it becomes an American latte. Starbucks' American latte is made in this way, with Italian espresso at the bottom, milk heated to 65-75°C in the middle, and finally a layer of cold milk foam no longer than half a centimeter.
If you do not put hot milk, but directly decorate the Italian espresso with two tablespoons of milk foam, it will become a Macchiato coffee called Espresso Macchiato by Italians.
Cafe Au Lait
Café au lait can be regarded as a European-style latte, which is different from American latte and latte. The preparation of au lait coffee is also very simple, that is, pour a cup of Italian espresso and a large cup of hot milk into a large cup at the same time, and finally put two spoons of foamed cream on the surface of the liquid. The biggest difference between au lait coffee and American latte and Italian latte is that it requires milk and espresso to be poured into the cup at the same time. Milk and coffee meet at the first time, and the collision creates a leisurely and free mood.
The French are the most enthusiastic supporters of au lait coffee. You will see round au lait cups on the breakfast table in France, which are filled with the source of their good mood throughout the day. Interestingly, comparing all coffee cups, the cup used by the French to hold au lait coffee is probably the largest.
Latte is the most familiar Italian coffee item among Chinese people. It is a fancy coffee with the same proportion or even more milk added to the thick and rich ESPRESSO. With the warm flavoring of milk, the originally sweet and bitter coffee becomes smooth, sweet, luscious and rich. Even people who are not used to drinking coffee can't beat the delicious taste of latte. Like cappuccino, latte is great for drinking in the morning because it contains a lot of milk. Italians also like to use it to warm their stomach and serve it with breakfast. Many people are confused about the relationship between latte and au lait. In fact, latte is Italian-style milk coffee, which uses machine steam to steam hot milk, while oulay is French coffee. They use fire to boil the milk, and the taste is the same warm and smooth.
The ratio of milk to coffee, beans used, extraction parameters, etc. of latte coffee will be slightly different in each store. But generally, a latte is a coffee drink in which a large amount of milk is mixed with espresso.
Many friends have sent private messages to FrontStreet Coffee asking what they need to learn to be a barista, and whether they can become a barista if they know how to latte art. In fact, if you want to be a barista, you must not only be able to make coffee, but also learn a lot of coffee knowledge. The most basic skills are of course extracting espresso and steaming milk. Many cafes will choose to use latte coffee as a test question to test whether the interviewer has basic barista skills.
How does FrontStreet Coffee make its latte?
FrontStreet Coffee’s own FrontStreet Sunflower Italian-style blended coffee beans are used for display. The coffee bean information is as follows:
Front Street Sunflower Warm Italian Style Blend Coffee Bean
Source of blended beans: Front Street Honduran sherry barrels & Front Street Ethiopian sun-dried Yirgacheffe red cherries
Composition ratio: 7:3
Flavor description: Vanilla, cream, fermentation aroma, wine flavor, chocolate
Italian coffee extraction parameters:
Amount of coffee powder: 18 grams
Coffee liquid volume: 36 grams
Extraction time: 28 seconds
Milk parameters:
Milk type: Whole milk
Sensing temperature: 50 degrees Celsius
Milk foam thickness: 1cm
Milk to coffee ratio: 1:9
Cup details:
Cup capacity: 200ml
Material: ceramic
How to make a good concentrated extract?
1. Choose beans
FrontStreet Coffee generally recommends cultivating espresso beans for about ten days, but everyone knows that dark roasted beans will emit gas faster than lightly roasted beans, but why does our recommended bean cultivation period take so long? This is because when making espresso, there is not enough space to vent the coffee like when making manual brewing. If the coffee beans are too fresh and the exhaust is relatively strong, it is easy to produce a channel effect, resulting in unstable concentrate.
2. Adjust the grinding degree
Now that we have the right coffee beans, we need to look at the grinding size for espresso! This is basically something that needs to be done every day - grinding. The grinding degree of espresso coffee is not just set on a certain scale. When should you adjust the grinding degree?
The condition of the grinder may need to be adjusted
1. When the temperature, air pressure, and humidity change suddenly: especially in open spaces.
2. When replacing old coffee beans with new ones: When a pack of coffee beans is used up and newly opened beans are poured in alternately. Because newly opened coffee beans may have different roasting dates, batches, and bean raising periods, the extraction conditions will be very different.
3. Continuous brewing: After 5 to 6 consecutive cups, the grinding will suddenly become very fine. This is because when the grinder is continuously activated, the heat energy of the motor is conducted to the cutterhead, plus the heat energy generated by the friction between the cutterhead itself and the coffee beans, causing the gap between the upper and lower cutterheads to become very thin due to thermal expansion and contraction.
The humidity and storage time of coffee beans are constantly changing, and the degree of wear of the grinder blades also changes over time, so baristas should regularly adjust the grinder to ensure that the ground coffee powder remains perfect.
When the coffee beans enter the grinder, the blades in the grinder crush the beans into powder. The smaller the blade-to-blade distance, the coffee beans will be ground into smaller particles. The finer the ground particles, the tighter they are and the more difficult it is for water to pass through, thus greatly extending the extraction time. On the contrary, if the distance between the blades becomes larger, the ground particles will become rougher, and the water flow will pass through more easily, and the extraction time will become faster.
Generally, we will use the last extraction parameters to make a cup of concentrate, and the time should be controlled within 25-30 seconds. The amount of powder for a single head is 13-14 grams, and the amount of powder for a double head is about 20 grams.
After excluding factors such as powder cake perforation, if the extraction time becomes longer, it may be that the surface is over-extracted and the inside is under-extracted, which manifests as sourness, burnt bitterness, and astringent taste. Then it may be that the powder is too fine, and you can adjust it slightly coarser. However, if the flow rate of the coffee becomes faster, the water flow is thicker, the extraction is shallow, and the color is white, then it may be that the powder is coarser, and you can adjust it slightly finer.
3. Receive powder
Powder joining is the first step in spreading the powder. If the powder joining is uneven, it will have a great degree of misleading and influence on the subsequent powder spreading steps. Even if you use a very advanced powder spreading auxiliary tool, you cannot completely ignore the impact of the powder joining step on the espresso extraction.
What are the effects of uneven powder pick-up?
1. Difference in taste: If the powder is unevenly distributed, the distribution of the lower part of the powder layer cannot be corrected when spreading the powder. Uneven density distribution of the powder layer will lead to uneven thickness of the powder cake, and different speeds of hot water passing through different locations during extraction. A little carelessness can easily lead to perforation and channeling effects (the inertness of water will cause water to choose places where it can easily pass through, while ignoring other pathways), resulting in part of the powder cake being under-extracted and part over-extracted, and the taste of coffee every time being unstable.
2. The extraction parameters were too different. As a result, the grinder, which had been adjusted for a long time, had the wrong flow rate, wrong time, and wrong grinding degree. After grinding a bunch of coffee beans, it still could not produce stable coffee.
So how do you practice catching fans?
1. Prepare electronic scale
Weighing the powder before each extraction is an essential operation for making the perfect espresso. Even if it is a quantitative grinder, I also recommend that you regularly check the accuracy of the grinder's weighing. After all, no matter how advanced the machine is, errors and malfunctions will inevitably occur.
2. Rotate powder catcher
Regardless of whether the coffee powder is pulled by hand or straight out, as long as the coffee powder does not fall completely vertically, under the influence of lateral acceleration, the powder layer will still deviate to a certain extent. For example, when picking up powder by hand, the effect of pushing hard and pulling lightly is of course different - the harder it is, the more it will deviate to the left.
At this time, you need to rotate the handle at a constant speed while dialing the powder at a constant speed to keep the powder evenly distributed to different positions of the powder bowl - of course it is impossible to be absolutely uniform, but at least it is much better than fixing the powder.
4. Cloth powder
Our common methods of spreading powder are as follows:
1. Smooth cloth powder method
There are three powerful tools for scraping the cloth powder method: powder bin cover, bamboo slices and fingers. The scraping powder method is one of the most common and earliest techniques that novices come into contact with. It is usually combined with pushing back and forth and other movements. It is divided into "square powder spreading" which is smoothed front and back, left and right, "rotating powder spreading" which is smoothed by 360-degree rotation, etc.
2. Gently pat and lightly knead cloth powder method
Tapping and tapping are two actions, but they are usually used consecutively. Quickly tap the bottom of the handle with your palm to shake the powder pile evenly, and then tap it straight up and down, which can effectively eliminate large gaps in the powder layer, make the coffee powder pile more dense, and increase the amount of powder that can be accommodated in the powder bowl.
3. Utensil-assisted powder distribution method
When it comes to utensils to assist in spreading powder, everyone naturally shows his or her own skills. According to the various types of artifacts on the market, they are mainly divided into several types: ① Stir or shake; ② Smooth the surface; ③ Disperse through the screen; ④ Rotate and distribute.
Cloth powder effect check
During the extraction process, if you find that the coffee liquid outflow quickly becomes unstable, jumps greatly, and the color quickly becomes very light, then you can judge: there is a problem inside the powder cake (cracks appear) or the uneven pressing causes the part with less coffee powder to be over-extracted (this is also likely to be caused by uneven powder distribution) or the uneven powder distribution causes the edges not to be covered by coffee powder, causing water to flow directly there.
After the extraction is completed, remove the handle and observe the shape of the powder cake. If there is no coffee powder on the edge, or the coffee powder is soaked, or there are obvious gaps in the powder cake, etc., then the extraction failed due to uneven powder distribution.
4. Pressed powder
Pressing powder uses a certain amount of pressure to compact loose coffee powder so that pressurized hot water can penetrate evenly.
The direction is vertically downward. If the pressure is tilted, the high-temperature and high-pressure hot water coming out of the brewing head will seek to penetrate the layer with the least resistance, causing uneven extraction. At the same time, it is also easy to have what we often call the channel effect.
It doesn't matter how hard you press the powder or what kind of tamping hammer you use, as long as the powder is pressed tightly. Therefore, it is more important to keep the pressing force consistent every time.
How to froth milk?
How to froth the milk that is essential in latte? FrontStreet Coffee recommends using whole milk with a fat content of 3.2-3.8%.
This time I experimented with FrontStreet Coffee using Victoria’s Fresh Milk.
The process of whipping milk:
1. Place the steam wand at the center of the milk tank, tilting it 45 degrees to the upper right side and close to the edge of the milk tank, with a depth of about 1 cm. (This depth is common, but is only a suggestion when it comes to coffee machines with varying steam strengths.)
2. Turn on the steam pipe to steam, and the milk tank slowly moves downwards, and the air outlet of the steam wand is in contact with the milk liquid surface to create an aeration effect. It rolls up and down to slowly let the volume foam and expand.
3. When the foam is inflated and expanded to the desired thickness, move the steam wand diagonally to the right of the center point of the milk vat, near the rim of the steel cup, so that the milk foam rolls in a vortex.
4. Control the angle and depth of the steel cup to roll in the thicker milk froth, and stop when the required temperature is reached.
Principles of whipped milk
The first stage is: whipping and air intake. Whipping is when the steam wand outlet comes into contact with the milk liquid surface, and steam enters the milk to whip it into milk foam.
The second stage is: foaming. Foaming is to take the foamed milk and use a vortex to draw in the air, burst the larger milk foam, break it down into fine foam, and create a bonding effect between the milk molecules, making the milk foam tissue denser.
Things to note:send, inhale
Turn on the steam and start air intake, and observe the surface of the milk. If there is no sizzling sound when the milk is rotating, it means that the air has not been pumped in. At this time, you need to lower the milk tank a little and expose the nozzle a little to facilitate air intake. When you hear the sizzling sound of air intake, stop lowering the milk tank and keep it in place.
At this time, you need to observe the state of milk movement. Normally, the liquid should rotate while air is entering, forming a vortex.
The movement of moving the milk tank down to inhale air must be subtle and gradual, not too violent. When the sound is almost in the air inlet state, you should stabilize and stop lowering it.
The angle of the steam wand when frothing milk
Many people are used to placing the steam wand in the 2-3 o'clock or 9-10 o'clock direction of the milk tank (based on the premise that the tank mouth is the 12 o'clock direction)
Find the Angle of the Steam Wand In addition to placing the steam wand in the correct position, the angle between the steam wand and the liquid level is also very important.
If the steam wand is too vertical, most of the steam will be ejected downwards, making it difficult to form a small vortex in the milk; if the steam wand is too flat, most of the steam will be ejected in parallel directions, making the small whirlpool too large to form turbulent flow, making it difficult to control or the milk will overflow.
How to practice latte art for beginners
When we extract a cup of espresso and froth the milk, first shake the espresso in the cup in a circular motion to allow the oil to adhere to the wall of the cup, and then tilt the cup at an angle of about 40 degrees.
When injecting milk, control the water column not to be too large, so that the milk directly penetrates the coffee liquid to the bottom layer, and then starts to circle around to mix the milk and coffee liquid.
What needs to be noted here is that when injecting milk, the water column should be thin and fixed in the middle of the coffee liquid.
Then start to mix the milk and coffee liquid in a circle until it is about 60% full and start latte art.
Latte art
Push the layer of the heart and inject milk into 1/3 of the cup, push out a semi-circular arc, and then push another one forward. When it finally forms a heart shape, raise the height of the milk vat and pour in milk for a short while, so that the initial semi-circular arc can surround the entire heart, and finally use a thin line to finish.
Front Street Latte Flavor Description
The Italian bean currently used by FrontStreet Coffee is the Front Street Sunflower Warm Sun Italian Blend coffee beans blended in-house. It uses Front Street Honduran sherry barrel fermented beans and Front Street Ethiopian Yirgacheffe red cherry plan sun-dried coffee beans. The espresso made from this unique Italian blend bean will be obviously wine-filled chocolate when paired with milk. It has a clear sweetness, a long and clean aftertaste, and is very suitable for friends who like the aroma of wine.
For more specialty coffee beans, please add FrontStreet Coffee on private WeChat, WeChat ID: kaixinguoguo0925
You can now buy the above coffee beans online at the Taobao store “FrontStreet Coffee” (前街咖啡). FrontStreet Coffee is a long-established specialty coffee roaster in Guangzhou, China, and its Guangzhou retail shop sells coffee beans only. The shop carries dozens of coffee beans from different origins around the world, including carefully selected single-origin beans for V60 pour-over and espresso. Guangzhou’s FrontStreet Coffee shop is recommended by many coffee lovers.
The FrontStreet 2013 Yunnan coffee beans sold in the store come from the Typica variety grown at FrontStreet Coffee’s own plantation in Yunnan. The name comes from the year the brand and the plantation were founded. You can buy these beans from China’s Yunnan origin at the Guangzhou shop and at FrontStreet’s Taobao store.
FrontStreet coffee beans are freshly roasted within 5 days and deliver consistently excellent quality and great value. Orders placed before 17:00 are shipped the same day, and most areas within Guangdong Province receive them the next day.
FrontStreet Coffee Taobao store: https://qianjiecoffee.taobao.com
Or search for “前街咖啡” (FrontStreet Coffee) on Taobao
Important Notice: FrontStreet Coffee has moved to a new address: 315, Donghua East Road, Guangzhou (coffee beans only)
Tel: 020 38364473
