Latte Art Pouring Techniques for Beginners: What Milk to Use and the Importance of Pre-Pour Integration

Latte is one of the most common coffee beverages. Watching a barista skillfully pour milk into espresso, in the blink of an eye, a beautiful and delicious latte is ready. However, making a delicious and visually appealing latte is not as easy as it seems, and one of the major challenges is integration. If you want to enhance your latte art skills, let FrontStreet Coffee guide you~

Integration

Integration refers to thoroughly mixing part of the milk with espresso. The purpose of this is not only to make the latte art look beautiful, but more importantly, to ensure the flavor consistency of the latte. Imagine if a coffee is not properly integrated – the ratio of coffee liquid to milk inside the latte will be inconsistent. This might result in the first sip being too bitter, while the second sip tastes overwhelmingly milky, diminishing the overall experience.

What Constitutes Good Integration?

For this reason, integration has become the most crucial aspect of a milk coffee. Good integration begins with the even mixing of the coffee crema with milk foam on the surface, which manifests as color consistency across the liquid surface – what we commonly call the "golden ring." Secondly, the coffee surface should be delicate and smooth, without large bubbles.

The formation of bubbles is largely due to positioning the pitcher too high during integration, causing the milk to break through the coffee crema and create bubbles. In the eyes of a barista, perfect integration is far more important than creating a beautiful pattern.

Are There Any Techniques for Latte Art Integration?

First, the "hardware" must be up to standard! This means the quality of espresso and milk foam must be excellent – the espresso crema should be rich and thick, while the milk foam should be fine with strong fluidity. Often, poor integration occurs when the milk foam is too thick, resulting in poor fluidity and foam floating on the surface. Additionally, gently swirling the coffee cup and milk pitcher before integration to enhance liquid movement will also increase the success rate of integration.

Second, the height of the pitcher spout during integration. We all know that when creating latte art, we need to lower the spout close to the coffee surface to achieve white foam. The same principle applies here – if the spout is too low, large amounts of foam will float on the surface, causing uneven integration. Conversely, if it's too high, you'll encounter the previously mentioned problem of bubbles forming on the surface.

Generally, the distance between the pitcher spout and the coffee surface should be around 5 to 10 centimeters. Everyone's habits differ, so there's no completely fixed standard for height and distance.

Third, the integration technique. Generally, the integration method involves stirring in one direction. Hold the coffee cup with your left hand and the latte art pitcher with your right hand, with both hands offset by half a circle for relative circular motion. This high-low stirring motion can easily mix the coffee and milk thoroughly. As for how large to make the circles, FrontStreet Coffee suggests making the largest circles possible without touching the cup walls. Pay attention to slowly straighten the hand holding the coffee cup.

Fourth, regarding the amount of integration, it depends on how large a pattern you want to create. If you don't want latte art, you can integrate until the cup is full, and the coffee's flavor will still be well preserved. For simple patterns, integrate to about 70% full. For complex patterns, integrate to about 40% full.

Important Notice :

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