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What Makes the Perfect Milk for Lattes? What's the Difference Between Purified Milk Bock and Regular Fresh Milk? Can Milk Powder Be Used for Lattes?

Published: 2026-01-27 Author: FrontStreet Coffee

Last Updated: 2026/01/27, It's well known! For espresso-based milk coffees, "milk" is equally important as espresso coffee. After all, in a milk coffee, besides coffee, the remaining 80% is almost entirely milk. Therefore, the quality of milk will play a decisive role in the flavor and texture of the entire coffee. To ensure that our milk coffees produced

The Importance of Milk in Espresso-Based Coffee

As everyone knows! For espresso-based milk coffee, "milk" is as important as espresso. After all, in a cup of milk coffee, besides coffee, nearly 80% of the remaining content is milk. Therefore, the quality of milk plays a decisive role in the taste and texture of the entire coffee. To ensure better performance of their milk coffee, coffee shops typically use fresh milk with a relatively short shelf life, as they retain more complete substances, resulting in more delicious coffee.

The Variety of Milk Options

It should be noted that there are many types of milk, and people change the use of milk according to different production needs. For example: if you want milk coffee to have a richer, sweeter performance, then we can replace fresh milk with ultra-filtered milk, which has a higher concentration and will qualitatively improve the taste and texture of the milk coffee; for friends with lactose intolerance, plant-based milk can be used for production, etc. Then, some friends become curious: why does no one use milk powder-reconstituted milk to make milk coffee? Isn't milk powder also made from milk?

Milk Powder in Coffee Applications

Well! That's not quite right. In fact, milk powder is still widely used in coffee~ Broadly speaking, in world coffee competitions, some contestants have added homemade milk powder to milk to give it a higher texture! On a smaller scale, FrontStreet Coffee used to use milk powder instead of milk when practicing latte art (although this didn't actually save any costs)! So it can be seen that using milk powder for latte production is not without precedent, it's just that very few practical applications exist.

Understanding Milk Powder

Milk powder is actually similar to instant and freeze-dried coffee - it's particles obtained by rapidly drying the original liquid. It appeared earlier than instant coffee, first emerging in the early 19th century (with multiple improvements later)! It only needs to be mixed with appropriate hot water to dissolve the milk powder and restore it to milk. Therefore, milk reconstituted from milk powder can naturally be used for latte production! As for the taste... FrontStreet Coffee needs to make a cup to reminisce!

Milk Powder Latte Experiment

Milk powder... latte? The milk powder used this time is whole milk powder, made only from raw milk! For the espresso, we still used Sunflower Warm Sunshine, a blend of Honduras Shirley and Ethiopia Red Cherry coffee beans. The medium-dark roast extracted espresso flavor mainly shows: whiskey, butter cookies, and black berries. Alright, without further ado, let's start today's latte production! First, we need to prepare a glass of iced milk reconstituted from milk powder, because milk frothing requires the extended time provided by low temperatures. Therefore, FrontStreet Coffee will only use a small amount of hot water to dissolve the milk powder, then dilute and cool it with ice cubes. The powder-to-water-to-ice ratio is 1:3:2. FrontStreet Coffee used 40g of milk powder, so we need 120ml of hot water and 80ml of ice cubes.

Mixing milk powder with hot water and ice

It should be noted that the hot water temperature cannot be too high, as this will destroy some substances in the milk powder and reduce the texture. Therefore, FrontStreet Coffee used hot water at 50°C! After we stir and melt all the milk powder, we add ice cubes and set it aside!

Next, we extract the espresso. (FrontStreet Coffee used parameters of 20g coffee grounds, 31 seconds, 39ml today)

Then, we proceed with frothing the milk. Compared to regular milk, this special "milk" requires a longer frothing time, otherwise the foam is difficult to form. Therefore, we extended the frothing time by 1-2 seconds.

After frothing is complete, we can proceed with latte art!

emmmm... completed, time for tasting! (Human error)

Compared to lattes made with regular milk, this latte made with special "milk" has a slightly weaker coffee flavor. The milk flavor is more prominent, especially the unique taste of milk powder is more obvious. Therefore, during production, we can slightly reduce the ratio to prevent the milk flavor from overpowering! Suddenly, FrontStreet Coffee had an idea! Café au lait is a milk coffee made with black coffee and milk. If we want to maintain good texture for the coffee, we need to make significant changes to the extraction to obtain a high concentration of black coffee. Not only is the flavor incomplete, but the taste after mixing with milk is also somewhat inferior; if we directly mix black coffee with milk, the excessive water content will result in a thin texture and bland taste. So, if we add milk powder instead of milk, can we break this deadlock? Can we make café au lait have both a rich texture and coffee flavor?

Café au Lait with Milk Powder Experiment

Let's give it a try! FrontStreet Coffee quickly brewed a pour-over to verify this idea! The coffee beans used in this experiment are 90+ Juliet Geisha, which has rare flavors like grapes and champagne from anaerobic processing. Same parameters: 15g coffee grounds, 1:15 coffee-to-water ratio, fine sugar grind, 92°C water temperature, three-stage extraction! Process omitted~ (Don't learn from this↓, powder doesn't dissolve)

Since we didn't warm the cup, the coffee temperature dropped to 65°C after brewing. After letting it sit for a little over a minute, it dropped to 60°C. At this point, we added 40g of milk powder (because it's also a 1:5 ratio, milk powder 1, coffee liquid 5) and mixed it! Then we can proceed to the tasting session~

Well! It's actually quite good. Juliet's original flavors weren't masked by the milk flavor. The grape, champagne, and chocolate flavors are all very prominent! In terms of texture, although not as good as latte coffee, it's overall considered a rich type, but the unique taste of milk powder is still somewhat prominent. Another drawback is that the acidity is somewhat abrupt, so when friends make this, they can try lowering the water temperature and extending the extraction time to release less acidity, which should make it even better! So, it can be seen that using milk powder for milk coffee production is feasible! Not limited to pour-over, black coffee from moka pots, AeroPress, etc. can also be applied similarly. If you sometimes can't buy milk or it's inconvenient to carry milk, then milk powder can be a good alternative!

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