Complete Guide to Latte Coffee Beans - Latte Coffee Types, Characteristics, and Perfect Ratios

While people are increasingly focusing on single-origin coffee, the order situation at FrontStreet Coffee still shows that espresso-based coffee accounts for the majority of production. When it comes to selecting espresso beans, FrontStreet Coffee focuses on the flavor, body, and acid-bitter balance of each bean. FrontStreet Coffee has always believed that coffee is a highly inclusive culture that can either simply showcase the flavors of a single origin or blend multiple regions to present complex flavors. To ensure that coffee flavors are not overwhelmed by milk while maintaining harmony with it, FrontStreet Coffee considers various factors including the selection of espresso bean varieties and the coffee-to-milk ratio.

The Meaning of Latte Coffee

Although "Caffe' Latte" meaning milk added to coffee is Italian, this beverage was not invented in Italy. The origin of latte coffee can be traced back to the war between the Ottoman Empire and Vienna. In 1683, Muhammad IV's Muslim army besieged Vienna, and the situation was urgent. The Christians trapped in Vienna decided to ask Poland for reinforcements, but first had to find someone who could speak Turkish to possibly deceive the Turkish army outside the city. Fanz George Kolschitsky, a Viennese who had done business in Turkey for many years, volunteered for the mission. With his fluent Turkish, he deceived the enemy, swam across the Danube River to seek help from the Polish king, and the Christian army arrived in Vienna and drove away the Turks.

The Turkish army hastily retreated but left behind large quantities of supplies, including gold, cattle, horses, camels, and dozens of bags of coffee beans. At that time, Viennese people didn't know what the coffee in the bags was, thinking it was livestock feed. When distributing rewards, no one paid attention to the unremarkable coffee beans, except Kolschitsky, who took all the coffee beans because he had lived in Turkey and knew how to make money from them.

He then opened a Blue Bottle café. Initially, he brewed coffee exactly according to the Turkish unfiltered method, but Viennese people were not accustomed to Turkish coffee with coffee grounds, which was thick and burnt. Kolschitsky had a clever idea: he used cloth to filter out the coffee grounds and added milk and honey, creating a new type of refreshing beverage that was very popular among Viennese people. This was also the first time milk was combined with coffee, around the late 17th to early 18th century. The technology at that time was not sufficient to invent high-pressure steam milk frothing equipment, but Kolschitsky's innovation of adding milk to coffee allowed for more diverse ways of drinking coffee, becoming the ancestor of today's Caffe' Latte.

The Blue Bottle café also became the most classic coffee house in Europe, and many famous painters used it as their subject. Vienna currently still treasures several paintings depicting Kolschitsky serving guests, which shows how popular the Blue Bottle café was at that time.

Because "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" and the Italian word "latte" have the same meaning, both referring to milk. Latte Coffee is what we call coffee with added milk, usually directly translated as "latte coffee." As for the French "Cafe au Lait," which means coffee with milk, people generally call it "café au lait" or "au lait coffee."

It wasn't until the 1980s that the term latte coffee was used outside Italy. Generally, latte coffee consists of one-third espresso and two-thirds fresh milk, usually without adding milk foam. Compared to cappuccino, it has more fresh milk flavor. The ratio in latte coffee is coffee:milk:milk foam = 1:2:1.

Latte coffee is a classic mixture of Italian espresso and milk, and Italians also like to have latte as a breakfast drink. In the kitchens of Italians in the morning, there are usually coffee and milk cooking simultaneously on a stove that gets sunlight. Italians who drink lattes prefer milk rather than espresso, and only espresso can give ordinary milk an unforgettable flavor.

Italian Style Latte Coffee

Italian style latte coffee (Caffe Latte) requires a small cup of Espresso and a cup of milk (150-200 ml). Latte coffee has more milk and less coffee, which is very different from Cappuccino. The method for making latte coffee is extremely simple - just pour near-boiling milk into freshly made Italian espresso. In fact, there's no strict rule about how much milk to add; it can be freely adjusted according to personal taste.

If you add some cold milk foam on top of hot milk, it becomes an American style latte coffee. Starbucks' American latte is made using this method: espresso at the bottom, heated milk at 65-75°C in the middle, and finally a layer of cold milk foam not exceeding half a centimeter.

If you don't add hot milk but directly decorate the espresso with two large spoons of milk foam, it becomes what Italians call Espresso Macchiato.

Café Au Lait

Café au lait can be seen as a European version of latte coffee, different from both American latte and regular latte. The method for making café au lait is also very simple: pour a cup of Italian espresso and a large cup of hot milk simultaneously into a large cup, and finally place two spoons of whipped cream on the surface of the liquid. The biggest difference between café au lait and American latte and Italian latte is that it requires milk and espresso to be injected into the cup together, so milk and coffee meet at the first moment, creating a feeling of leisure and freedom.

The French are the most enthusiastic supporters of café au lait. On breakfast tables in France, you'll see round-bellied au lait cups containing the source of their good mood for the day. Interestingly, among all coffee cups, the ones French people use for café au lait are probably the largest.

Latte coffee is the most familiar Italian coffee item to Chinese people. It's a flavored coffee made by adding equal proportions or even more milk to rich, strong ESPRESSO. With the tempering of milk, the originally bitter coffee becomes smooth, sweet, and richly fragrant. Even people who are not used to drinking coffee find it hard to resist the aromatic taste of latte. Like cappuccino, latte is suitable for morning consumption because it contains a large amount of milk. Italians also like to use it to warm their stomachs and accompany breakfast. Many people are confused about the relationship between latte and café au lait. In fact, latte is Italian-style milk coffee, using machine steam to heat milk, while café au lait is French-style coffee - they heat milk with fire, but the texture is equally smooth and beautiful.

Every coffee shop has subtle differences in the ratio of milk to coffee, bean selection, and extraction parameters for latte coffee. But generally, latte coffee is a coffee beverage made with a large amount of milk mixed into espresso.

Many friends privately message FrontStreet Coffee asking what one needs to learn to become a barista, and whether knowing latte art is enough to become a barista. In fact, becoming a barista requires not only knowing how to make coffee but also learning a lot of coffee knowledge. The most basic skills are extracting espresso and steaming milk. Many coffee shops choose latte coffee as a test question during barista interviews to determine whether candidates have basic barista skills.

How Does FrontStreet Coffee Make Latte Coffee?

FrontStreet Coffee uses its own Frontsteet Sunflower Warm Sunshine Espresso Blend for demonstration. The coffee bean information is as follows:

Frontsteet Sunflower Warm Sunshine Espresso Blend
Blend Source: Frontsteet Honduras Sherry Barrel & Frontsteet Ethiopia Natural Yirgacheffe Red Cherry
Composition Ratio: 7:3
Flavor Description: Vanilla, cream, fermented notes, wine notes, chocolate

Espresso Extraction Parameters:

Coffee Dose: 18 grams
Coffee Yield: 36 grams
Extraction Time: 28 seconds

Milk Parameters:

Milk Type: Whole milk
Frothing Temperature: 50°C
Foam Thickness: 1cm
Milk to Coffee Ratio: 1:9

Cup Details:

Cup Capacity: 200ml
Material: Ceramic

How to Make a Good Espresso Extraction?

1. Choose Beans

FrontStreet Coffee generally recommends resting espresso beans for about ten days. But everyone knows that dark roasted beans degas faster than light roasted ones, so why do we recommend such a long rest period? This is because when making espresso, unlike pour-over, there isn't enough space for coffee to degas. If coffee beans are too fresh with active degassing, channeling can easily occur, leading to unstable espresso extraction.

2. Adjust Grind Size

Once you have suitable coffee beans, you need to look at the espresso grind size! This basically needs to be done daily - adjusting the grind. The grind size for espresso isn't fixed at a certain setting. When should you adjust the grind size?

Situations that may require grinder adjustment:

1. When temperature, air pressure, or humidity suddenly changes: especially noticeable in open spaces.
2. When replacing old coffee beans with new ones: when one bag of coffee beans is used up and new unsealed beans are added. Because new coffee beans may have different roast dates, batches, and rest periods, leading to different extraction situations.
3. Continuous brewing: after 5-6 consecutive extractions, the grind size may suddenly become very fine because the continuous use of the grinder transfers motor heat to the burrs, plus the heat generated by friction between the burrs and coffee beans, causing the upper and lower burrs to expand due to heat, making the gap smaller.

The humidity and storage time of coffee beans are constantly changing, and the wear degree of grinder blades also changes over time, so baristas should regularly adjust the grinder to ensure the ground coffee powder remains perfect.

When coffee beans enter the grinder, the blades inside will crush the coffee beans into powder. The smaller the distance between the blades, the smaller particles the coffee beans will be ground into. The finer the ground particles, the more compact and dense they become, making it more difficult for water to pass through, thus greatly extending the extraction time. Conversely, if the distance between blades increases, the ground particles become coarser, water passes through more easily, and extraction time becomes faster.

Generally, we use the previous extraction parameters to make an espresso, controlling the time within 25-30 seconds, with single dose being 13-14 grams and double dose being around 20 grams.

After excluding factors like puck perforation, if extraction time becomes longer, it might be surface over-extraction with under-extraction inside,表现为 sharp acidity, burnt bitterness, and astringency. This could mean the grind is too fine, and you can adjust it slightly coarser. But if the coffee flow rate becomes faster with thick water flow, shallow extraction, and pale color, it might be that the grind is too coarse, and you can adjust it slightly finer.

3. Dosing

Dosing is the first step of distribution. Uneven dosing greatly misleads and affects the subsequent distribution steps. Even with very advanced distribution tools, you cannot completely ignore the impact of dosing on espresso extraction.

What are the effects of uneven dosing?

1. Flavor differences: If dosing is uneven, the distribution situation in the lower part of the powder layer cannot be remedied during distribution. Uneven density distribution in the powder layer leads to uneven puck thickness and different water flow speeds through different positions during extraction. Slight carelessness can easily lead to perforation or channeling (water's inertia makes it choose easy paths to pass through while ignoring other routes), causing some parts of the puck to be under-extracted and others over-extracted, resulting in unstable coffee flavors each time.

2. Large variations in extraction parameters, leading to adjusting the grinder for half a day with incorrect flow rate, incorrect time, and incorrect grind size, wasting a pile of coffee beans while still unable to achieve stable production.

How to practice dosing?

1. Prepare a digital scale
Weighing the dose before each extraction is essential for making perfect espresso. Even with dosing grinders, I recommend regularly checking the accuracy of the grinder's measurement, as even the most advanced machines can have errors and malfunctions.

2. Rotational dosing
Whether manual dosing or direct discharge, as long as coffee powder doesn't fall completely vertically, the powder layer will show some degree of bias under the influence of lateral acceleration. For example, when manually dosing, the effect of forceful versus gentle dosing is different - the more force, the more it leans to the left.

This requires maintaining uniform dosing speed while uniformly rotating the portafilter to distribute powder evenly to different positions in the portafilter basket - of course, absolute uniformity is impossible, but it's much better than fixed dosing.

4. Distribution

We commonly see several distribution methods:

First, Scraping Distribution Method

There are three great tools for scraping distribution: bean bin lid, bamboo slice, and finger. Scraping distribution is one of the most common and earliest methods encountered by beginners, usually combined with back-and-forth pushing movements, including "four-direction distribution" of scraping front, back, left, and right, and "rotational distribution" of 360-degree rotation scraping.

Second, Light Tapping Distribution Method

Light tapping and light knocking are two actions but are usually used consecutively. Quickly tap the bottom of the portafilter with the palm to shake the powder pile evenly, then supplement with vertical light knocking to effectively eliminate large gaps in the powder layer, making the coffee powder pile denser while increasing the amount of powder that can be accommodated in the portafilter basket.

Third, Tool-Assisted Distribution Method

When it comes to tool-assisted distribution, each has its own merits. According to various tools on the market, they are mainly divided into several types: ① Stirring or shaking; ② Smoothing the surface; ③ Sieve dispersion; ④ Rotational distribution.

Checking Distribution Effect

If during extraction you find that the state of coffee liquid flow quickly becomes unstable with large jumps and the color quickly becomes very pale, you can judge: there are problems inside the puck (cracks appeared) or uneven tamping caused parts with less coffee powder to be over-extracted (which might also be caused by uneven distribution leading to uneven tamping) or simply uneven distribution causing edge areas not to be covered by coffee powder, leading to water flowing directly from there.

After extraction is complete, remove the portafilter and observe the shape of the puck. If there are no coffee grounds at the edges, or the coffee grounds are soaked up, or the puck has obvious gaps, it's because of uneven distribution that led to extraction failure.

4. Tamping

Tamping is to compact loose coffee powder with certain pressure so that pressurized hot water can penetrate evenly.

The direction is vertically downward. If tamped crookedly, the high-temperature, high-pressure hot water from the brew head will seek the layer with least resistance to penetrate, causing uneven extraction. At the same time, it easily leads to what we commonly call channeling.

The amount of tamping force and what tamper is used don't matter much, as long as the powder is compacted. Therefore, maintaining consistent tamping force each time becomes more important.

How to Froth Milk?

How should the essential milk foam in latte be frothed to achieve smoothness? FrontStreet Coffee recommends using whole milk with 3.2-3.8% fat content. For this experiment, FrontStreet Coffee used Kowloon Dairy fresh milk.

The Process of Frothing Milk:

1. Place the steam wand at the center point of the milk pitcher, tilted 45 degrees to the upper right near the edge of the pitcher, at a depth of about 1 cm. (This depth is quite common, but面对 coffee machines with different steam strengths, this is only a suggestion.)

2. Open the steam wand steam, slowly move the milk pitcher downward, and make the steam wand air holes contact the milk surface to create aeration effect, presenting an up-and-down flipping motion to slowly expand the volume with foam.

3. When aeration and expansion reach the desired thickness, move the steam wand diagonally to the right side near the steel cup edge at the center point of the milk pitcher, making the milk foam present a vortex rolling motion.

4. Control the angle and depth of the steel cup to roll in larger milk bubbles, and stop when reaching the desired temperature.

The Principle of Milk Frothing

The first stage is: frothing, air intake. Frothing is when the steam wand air holes contact the milk surface, and steam enters the milk to froth it into milk foam.

The second stage is: smoothing. Smoothing is using vortex motion to roll in air for the frothed milk, breaking larger milk bubbles into smaller foam, and creating bonding between milk molecules to make the milk foam texture denser.

Points to note: Frothing, Air Intake

Open steam to start air intake, observe the milk surface. If the milk rotates without hearing a "hissing" sound, it means air isn't being introduced. At this point, you need to lower the milk pitcher slightly to expose the nozzle a bit for air intake. When you hear the hissing sound of air intake, stop lowering the milk pitcher and hold it in place.

At this time, observe the state of milk movement. Normally, it should form a vortex while taking in air and rotating liquid.

The action of lowering the milk pitcher for air intake must be subtle and gradual, not too forceful. When the sound indicates air intake, steady yourself and stop lowering.

The Angle of Steam Wand When Frothing Milk

Many people are accustomed to placing the steam wand at the 2-3 o'clock or 9-10 o'clock direction of the milk pitcher (taking the pitcher spout as 12 o'clock direction).

In addition to placing the steam wand in the correct position, the angle between the steam wand and the liquid surface is also very important.

If the steam wand is too vertical, most steam will spray downward, making it difficult for milk to form a small vortex. If the steam wand is too horizontal, most steam will spray parallel, making the small vortex too large and creating turbulence that's difficult to control or causing milk to overflow.

Beginner Latte Art Practice Methods

When we have extracted a cup of espresso and frothed milk, first shake the espresso in the cup in circles to make the crema adhere to the cup wall, then tilt the cup at about 40 degrees.

When pouring milk, control the stream to not be too large, making the milk directly penetrate through the coffee liquid to the bottom layer, then start circling to mix milk and coffee liquid.

What needs attention here is that the milk stream should be fine when pouring, and it should be fixed at the center of the coffee liquid.

Then start circling to mix milk and coffee liquid until about six-tenths full before starting latte art.

Push Layer Heart Latte Art

For push layer heart, pour milk at the 1/3 point of the cup, push out a semicircle, then immediately push forward another one. When forming a heart shape at the end, raise the height of the milk pitcher and pour a small amount of milk to make the initial semicircle surround the entire heart, and finally use a thin stream to finish.

Frontsteet Latte Coffee Flavor Description

FrontStreet Coffee currently uses its own Frontsteet Sunflower Warm Sunshine Espresso Blend, which selects Frontsteet Honduras Sherry Barrel fermented processed beans and Frontsteet Ethiopia Yirgacheffe Red Cherry Project natural processed coffee beans. This uniquely flavored espresso blend makes espresso that, when paired with milk, presents obvious liquor-filled chocolate with noticeable sweetness, long aftertaste, and cleanliness, very suitable for friends who like liquor flavors.

For more specialty coffee beans, please add FrontStreet Coffee on private WeChat, WeChat ID: kaixinguoguo0925

Important Notice :

前街咖啡 FrontStreet Coffee has moved to new addredd:

FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473