The Origin of Flat White: How to Pronounce Flat White in English? Differences Between Flat White and Latte, Can It Be Served Iced?

For professional coffee knowledge exchange and more coffee bean information, please follow Coffee Workshop (WeChat official account: cafe_style). For more premium coffee beans, please add FrontStreet Coffee on WeChat, ID: qjcoffeex.

Flat White (phonetic translation of the original name), commonly known as Australian White Coffee, ranks among the top three hot milk coffees at Starbucks. Unlike latte and cappuccino, Flat White has a velvety smooth texture like a latte, yet also offers the richness of a cappuccino.

The Origin of Flat White

According to Starbucks, Flat White is an Australian creation—a drink that originated in Australia in the 1980s and has been loved by coffee consumers in Australia and other regions. Starbucks customers in Australia have been enjoying the drink in stores since 2009, while customers in the UK and US have been enjoying it since 2010, until it reached China in 2012.

However, people from New Zealand disagree with this origin description. The New Zealand Herald called Flat White a "typical New Zealand coffee." Although Sydney cafes might have first offered the drink in the 1980s, the "Herald" wrote that Wellington is where Flat White was perfected.

Australian food historian Michael Symons conducted in-depth research on where Flat White comes from, ultimately providing this explanation: Although Flat White might have come from Sydney and Melbourne, its best incarnation can be found in Wellington. He noted that some cafes in the late 1980s and 1990s had already claimed to have contributed to its perfection, but this claim remains unresolved.

While we cannot determine exactly where Flat White originated, we can be certain of one thing: compared to latte, Flat White has a more intense coffee flavor and thinner milk foam, making it richer both in texture and taste.

Starbucks Flat White Preparation Method

Starbucks' Flat White preparation uses 2/3/4 shots of ristretto espresso depending on cup size. The hot version adds steamed milk with 0.5cm thick foam, while the iced version first adds ice cubes and milk, then finishes with ristretto espresso poured on top.

Can Flat White Be Served Iced?

But in reality, authentic Flat White only comes in a hot version. Starbucks offers an iced version to meet all consumers' demands for coffee customization. Therefore, to further experience the richness of Flat White, FrontStreet Coffee recommends everyone try the hot version.

How to Make Flat White at Home?

Making Flat White requires higher concentration (ristretto) espresso. Making ristretto espresso requires a pressurized espresso machine and medium-dark roasted espresso beans.

FrontStreet Coffee uses "Sunflower Warm Sun Espresso Beans," a blend of sun-dried Yirgacheffe + Honduras Shirley coffee beans for their Flat White. They extract 30g of coffee liquid from 20g of coffee powder, with extraction time between 23-28 seconds.

Then pour 150ml of chilled fresh milk into a milk pitcher, use the coffee machine's steam wand to aerate and heat the milk, creating foam about 0.5cm thick. Finally, combine the milk with coffee.

What's the Difference Between Flat White and Latte?

Although both consist only of milk and espresso, Flat White and latte have obvious differences in preparation and taste. "Caffe Latte" means milk in Italian, and latte emphasizes achieving balance between coffee and milk—allowing you to taste both coffee flavor and milk's sweet richness, with complementing each other without masking the other's taste. Flat White, however, uses milk to highlight the coffee flavor—coffee is the protagonist, milk is just supporting. Therefore, Flat White has a more abundant and intense coffee flavor.

Although Flat White has its own characteristics, there is no fixed preparation ratio in the industry. Each coffee shop's barista, based on their different understanding and combined with the espresso beans used by their shop, presents Flat White differently.

New Zealand baristas serve Flat White in smaller coffee cups than latte (about 150ml) and uniformly use double espresso as the base. This reduces the milk volume, increases the coffee ratio, and naturally intensifies the coffee flavor. Therefore, Flat White is also called "small latte."

With baristas' continuously improving extraction techniques, to better express the aroma of coffee beans in Flat White, Melbourne cafes also replace the base with double Ristretto, incorporating foam with thickness similar to latte in a 150ml capacity cup. Ristretto means extracting less liquid weight from the same amount of coffee grounds—essentially a compact version of espresso, focusing more on the early to middle stages of extraction, resulting in richer taste and higher requirements for coffee bean quality.

However, in Australia, baristas believe maintaining thinner foam than latte is sufficient. When serving Flat White, they use the same cup capacity as latte, emphasizing mainly the difference in foam thickness. Compared to other milk coffees like latte and cappuccino, Flat White has the thinnest foam, generally 0.3-0.5cm. The "Flat" in Flat White means flat—the foam must be thin enough to be level with the cup rim, without the foam layer bulging, ensuring each sip of concentrated coffee is accompanied by a delicate foam layer. Therefore, Flat White is also called "flat white coffee." Latte foam mostly presents a bulge of about 0.5-0.7cm, while Flat White foam can only be under 0.5cm, otherwise it's difficult to achieve the "flat" liquid surface. FrontStreet Coffee hopes customers experience a creamy smooth texture without being too "watery," so they maintain a 0.3cm foam layer.

Important Notice :

前街咖啡 FrontStreet Coffee has moved to new addredd:

FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473