Greg Suekoff: Hello I am Greg Suekoff, I am here at Caffe Pronto Coffee Roastery in Annapolis, Maryland. I am here today to show how to make the perfect Latte. We are here in the production area of Caffe Pronto where we roast all the coffee. Today we are going to talk about what exactly is a Cafe Latte, extracting the perfect espresso, steaming milk and then we are going to talk a little bit about the various designs you can make. Heart patterns, Rosetta patterns and variations on those that we have created here ourselves. Before you go any farther, I would like to show you some of the tools of the trade, the things that we will be using to create the perfect latte.

So here we have both the tools and the ingredients necessary for making the perfect latte. First we have, these are called tampers. They are used to compress the fine ground coffee into the portafilter before extraction. There are few varieties of tampers, the main difference being the bottom. Some of them are convex in the bottom versus some other styles which are flat. I prefer the flat, this is my tamper. In addition to coffee tampers you also need pitchers to steam the milk in. You are going to be steaming milk to about a 140 to a 160 degrees and we find the stainless steel milk pitchers work the best. In addition to the tools of the trade, there are also some key ingredients. Obviously you are going to need a fresh roasted coffee in order to make a nice cream on your espresso which will produce a predesign in the latte, you need to have fresh roasted coffee. Additionally you need a high quality grinder that's going to finely grind the coffee and prepare it for espresso extraction. You will need an espresso machine that is plumbed properly and has the right pressure and temperature components to it. This is called a portafilter, this is the part of the machine that we are going to put the coffee into, compact it and then we are going to put it into the machine and extract espresso. One thing to keep in mind when you are making latte is this there are few hot pieces, this Steam Wand produces steam that is very hot, you want to be careful from that and any water coming from the machine is also going to be very hot, you need to be careful. Again my name Greg Suekoff, I have been making lattes for about 12 years now, I have gotten to compete both nationally and internationally in latte art competition, so I am here to share my experience with you.