How Australian Coffee Culture Shaped the Flat White Debate

New Zealand and Australia both claim to have invented the flat white, a drink built on a thin layer of microfoam rather than the thicker foam of a cappuccino. The dispute remains unresolved, and the industry also disagrees on its espresso base, milk ratio, and cup size. The drink reached a wider audience in 2015, when Starbucks added it to US menus under a Chinese name.

Coffee first arrived on the Australian continent in the 18th century with British immigrants in 1788, but Australian coffee culture spread mainly from the 1830s, driven by the temperance movement. After World War II, Italian immigrants brought espresso and opened cafes in Melbourne, where street-side coffee stalls multiplied. New Zealand coffee culture developed its own flat white tradition in parallel, which is why both countries still press their claim.

Flat White is now a familiar sight in coffee shops around the world, but its origins have always been shrouded in mystery. New Zealand and Australia each insist they are the birthplace of this thin-microfoam coffee. At the same time, the industry also has different opinions about its espresso base, milk ratio, and cup size. This article takes you back through the history of coffee's popularity in Australia, sorts out the dispute between the two countries over the claim to originality, and analyzes the core differences in presentation between the Flat White and the Latte. If you are also curious about where this popular star drink actually came from, follow along with Front Street Coffee.

In coffee circles, there used to be a not-so-rigorous saying: once a drink is added to Starbucks' regular menu, it shows that it has already entered the mainstream to a large extent. In 2015, Starbucks put Flat White on the menus of all its stores across the United States under the name "馥芮白," and this coffee quickly became popular as a result.

In China, besides "馥芮白," it also has many other translations such as 澳白, 小白, 醇艺白, and 澳瑞白, with a wide variety of names. Not only that, the espresso extraction method, milk ratio, and serving vessel used for Flat White are all disputed, and even its place of origin is full of controversy, to the point that two countries in the Southern Hemisphere have argued over it.

So today, Front Street Coffee will spill the tea on the history of how Flat White became famous, and take a look at where this popular star of the coffee world actually comes from～

How did coffee become popular in Australia?

According to documentary records, coffee first arrived on the Australian continent in the 18th century, brought by the first group of British immigrants in 1788. However, coffee culture truly became widespread in Australia only in the 1830s, mainly driven by the temperance movement.

After World War II, around the 1950s, a large number of Europeans moved to Australia with their families, including many Italian immigrants. To make a living, they brought their homeland's specialty, espresso, here as well and began running coffee businesses.

As local coffee culture grew more prosperous, street-side coffee stalls kept appearing in the streets and alleys of Melbourne. At that time, Melbourne coffee shops were roughly divided into two types: one was the milk bar style shop, offering various drinks and light meals, with coffee limited to Long Black, Latte, and Cappuccino, essentially serving as a place for the working class to have lunch; the other sold only coffee and desserts, also with limited coffee choices, divided into plain black coffee and milk-based white coffee.

In the busier city center, coffee shops specializing in the espresso style emerged one after another, the variety of coffee served at the bar became increasingly rich, and people's taste in coffee rose accordingly. It was against this background that the Flat White, embodying Australians' extreme pursuit of coffee flavor and quality, came into being.

Australia and New Zealand have been arguing over the Flat White

The affirmative side says: New Zealander Fraser McInnes claims that the term "Flat white" was a new name he came up with in 1989 while working at a coffee shop in Wellington called Cafe Bodega, when he accidentally made the milk foam for a cappuccino too thin and simply went with the mistake. In fact, such a rich milk coffee with thin microfoam had already been produced as early as 1984, and his experience has also been written into some textbooks on the origin of coffee.

The opposing side says: Australian barista Alan Preston retorts that this drink was first developed by him at the Moors Espresso Bar he opened in Sydney, and that it had already appeared on the menu in 1985. Although he has long since changed careers and now sells other goods, as evidence, Preston displayed photos taken when he opened the shop on a website.

Although even today there is still no final conclusion in the dispute over the original creation of this hit coffee, it has not prevented it from becoming widely popular in the two countries and even around the world. For example, Australia's pride, Wolverine actor Hugh Jackman, is a longtime Flat White lover, and at his coffee shop LaughingMan Coffee in Manhattan, the Flat White is the signature product.

Flat White in different presentations

No matter which country created this much-loved drink, its spread can clearly be attributed to the international expansion of Australian coffee shops and baristas' unique insights into specialty coffee. The essence of the Flat White has always been the perfect compatibility of espresso and milk.

Compared with the Latte, which has a larger proportion of milk and thick foam, the Flat White has its signature thin microfoam, a warm but not scalding mouthfeel, and a medium-small cup size (5.5 ounces). The top layer of microfoam is generally only 0.5 cm, and on closer inspection the smooth surface can be seen to be made up of countless tiny bubbles, which people call a velvety texture. Technically speaking, these characteristics are also more conducive to allowing skilled baristas to create complex and detailed latte art patterns.

In terms of extracting the espresso base, some coffee shops do not limit themselves to espresso, but instead use a more concentrated extraction method, taking only the middle and front sections of the espresso, known as ristretto. Although the coffee does indeed become more intense than in a Latte, the amount is also reduced, and after adding milk it is still difficult to highlight the coffee flavor. For this reason, Melbourne baristas directly replaced the base with the amount of a double ristretto, then served it in a glass with a capacity of about 150 ml.

Here, Front Street Coffee would like to add a little: in fact, making a Flat White does not necessarily require using a double ristretto as the base. Some baristas choose conventional espresso, mainly judging according to production needs and the final taste. The reason people always emphasize this distinguishing point is more that they want to quickly understand how it differs from a Latte.

- END - Front Street Coffee (FrontStreet Coffee)

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The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.