How to Free Pour a Cafe Latte

Greg Suekoff: I am Greg Suekoff, we are here at Caffe Pronto Coffee Roastery learning how to make the perfect Latte. We have now learned how to steam the milk properly, we have learned how to pull the proper shots. Now I would like to show you how to make a drink in its entirety and in the process introduce you to a free pour latte art. So, we are going to combine all the skills we have just learned starting with making the shots of espresso. Now, to make a latte in a ceramic cup which is the preferred method, you always want to preheat your cup. You can do that directly from your espresso machine. So, when you preheat the cup you want to add maybe an inch of water. So you don't want to fill the cup up so as to make the entire cup hot to the touch. You just want to acclimatize the cup to the hot espresso, you don't want to loose too much of the temperature when you make your extraction. So, now we are going to back and pull shots of the espresso which we learned how to do before. Grinding, dosing, now leveling, tamping with the right pressure, purging the group head. Now you want to go and start your shots and see your hot cup. Now ideally your steamed milk and your shots of espresso are going to be finished around the same time. So, while these shots are pouring I am going to get my milk ready and begin steaming. Looks like we are on our way, the shots are pouring nicely. 26 seconds for the espresso shot is excellent. We have now created our microfoam milk. So now we have our two ingredients, we have our shots of espresso and our steamed milk. Now, the first thing to remember is you want to gently introduce the milk to the espresso, you don't want to break the crme. The next thing is to loosen the crme up a little bit and then start wiggling your pitcher back and forth and then you draw it through at the end. So, this is how you free pour a latte, this will be served on a saucer, neatly with the Demitasse spoons. And as you can see you have nice marveling of the crme on top, the white foam from the milk sticked out nicely and we have created what here is called a Rosetta and now I would like to show a few more Latte art designs including how to make a Rosetta, as well as a heart.