With the coming of autumn and winter, hot latte has become everyone’s favorite again. After all, who doesn’t want to drink a cup of heart-warming coffee on a cold and windy day? The key is still so sweet! Therefore, many friends have started making hot latte at home. Because of this, Front Street Backstage has received many questions from friends when making latte!
In the consultation information, most people said that the taste of the latte is not satisfactory, and it is always not as fragrant and sweet as the latte produced in the store. Either the bitterness of the coffee is too prominent, or the milky flavor overwhelms the coffee flavor. So today, Front Street will share with you how to make a delicious hot latte with a balanced taste, rich aroma and high sweetness!
1. Material selection
Although "Latte" is just a combination of two ingredients: milk and espresso, it still takes a lot of effort to make a latte that is mellow and not bitter. The reason why many friends fail to make a latte is that they often focus on the "assembly" of materials and ignore the selection of materials. As everyone knows, the selection of materials and the mastery of techniques are equally important for a cup of delicious latte. After all, the quality of a dish does not only come from the cooking process.
For coffee, the choice of beans will determine the taste of the entire cup of coffee! Therefore, if you want to make a delicious hot latte, the first thing you must choose is a suitable coffee bean.
Because latte will add a lot of milk to balance the taste of coffee, it will be more demanding on the degree of roasting of coffee beans. If the coffee beans are roasted too lightly and there are fewer reactions during roasting, the flavor of the extracted coffee will be easily masked by the flavor of milk.
Secondly, red flowers usually need green leaves to set off, and the sweetness of latte also needs to be highlighted by some bitterness. Therefore, when it comes to choosing coffee beans for making milk coffee, Front Street recommends that it is best to choose medium-dark or dark roasted coffee beans. Because this type of beans will have a more prominent burnt flavor to compete with milk, we recommend the Front Street Classic Italian Blend that highlights the fat, the Front Street Queen’s Manor with the roasted nut aroma, and the Golden Mandheling with the rich spice flavor.
If you don’t want it to be too bitter, then we can directly choose medium roasted coffee beans. For example, the Nuanyang blend used in the Front Street store is a medium-dark roasted bean! The coffee extracted at this roasting level not only does not have too much burnt and bitter taste, but is not easily masked by the taste of milk. The most important thing is that it also contains rich oil, latte art, and flavor, killing two birds with one stone.
Milk is another "protagonist" for latte besides concentration, and milk accounts for up to 80% of a cup of latte, so its choice is also crucial. But unlike coffee beans, the choice of milk needs to be selected based on the taste of your coffee beans! It goes without saying that whole milk is the first choice. What we need to choose is the milk that is most suitable for the current coffee beans among the whole milk!
Milk produced by different manufacturers has different advantages. For example, some milk is characterized by high sweetness, and some milk is characterized by thick taste and strong milk flavor... What you need to know is that these advantages are not suitable for all coffee. When the milk we use does not match the current bean, the coffee will not only not be outstanding, but will even do the opposite. Even though the beans and milk were of the highest quality, the combination just didn't taste good.
For example: you are using a medium-dark roasted coffee bean. The extracted coffee has a prominent flavor and the overall taste is very mellow. If you use a milk with a strong flavor and a high mellowness at this time, the latte you make will taste thick and a bit greasy because the taste is too strong and the mellowness is too high! Therefore, for beans like this, you need to find a milk that is not that thick and sweet to match.
Therefore, it is very important to have a milk that matches the flavor of the beans! In terms of taste and taste, it is recommended that you buy it yourself and try it. After all, the article is a comparison based on the Nuanyang blend from the former street.
2. Production
After talking about the materials, the next step is to make it! Espresso is the base of a cup of latte. The first thing we have to ensure is the balance of sour, sweet and bitter in its taste. It may be difficult to understand this way, but to put it simply, it is a cup of espresso that tastes neither sour nor burnt, and tastes very strong but acceptable! To do this, we need to find a suitable extraction formula!
Generally, Front Street recommends following the golden formula widely circulated on the Internet as the initial adjustment target. For example, use 18~20g of powder to extract twice the liquid weight of the powder in 25 to 30 seconds. Then fine-tune it according to the taste of the coffee.
And when we finish adjusting the espresso, all that's left to make is hot milk! You can choose milk with or without milk foam. After all, for home coffee, the presence of milk foam is not that important. Therefore, if we don’t want to go through so much trouble, we only need to heat the milk to a range of 60°C~68°C to activate the sweetness of lactose. And if we want to give the coffee a more delicate and dense taste, we can choose to froth the milk!
The final step in making a great latte is finding the perfect ratio between milk and coffee! The main thing that needs to be adjusted is the amount of milk. After all, there is only so much espresso extracted. Compared to adjusting the extraction, it is of course more convenient to start with the milk.
However, Front Street does not recommend that you directly apply other people's data ratios, because the coffee beans and milk used by each company are different. Even if they are the same, everyone's preference for taste and concentration is different. A delicious latte made by others may not be suitable for you. Therefore, it is best to adjust it according to your own taste.
Usually latte coffee will have a rough proportion range, which is1：4~1：8. But to say it is an adjustment is nothing more than the difference between a little more milk and a little less milk. If you think the milk taste is too strong, then use less milk. If you think the coffee taste is too strong and a bit bitter, then use more milk. And when you think that under a certain proportion, the taste of this latte is very outstanding, and it tastes very suitable to your taste. So congratulations, it means that this ratio is a golden ratio suitable for you, your beans, and your milk. You have successfully made a latte that best suits your taste and the ingredients you use!
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
