What does the national coffee association cappuccino latte difference tell baristas?

A standard latte depends on every step in order: bean selection, grind adjustment, dosing, distribution, tamping, milk steaming, and pouring. Espresso and steamed milk combine into a smooth, sweet drink, and the milk foam amount is what separates a latte from a cappuccino. Getting the extraction parameters right first matters more than the pattern on top.

Barista interviews often use a latte as the test, since it reveals whether someone can extract espresso and steam milk consistently. Even dosing, a distribution check, tamping direction, steam wand angle, and the beginner push-heart technique all shape the result. Milk proportion is high, which softens coffee's bitterness and makes the drink approachable in the morning.

Latte is one of the most familiar Italian drinks among domestic coffee enthusiasts. The combination of espresso and milk gives it a smooth, sweet, and easy-to-drink taste. But to make a qualified latte, every step matters, from bean selection, grind adjustment, dosing, distribution, and tamping, to steaming milk and pouring latte art. This article uses the latte commonly seen in barista interviews as an entry point, systematically sorting out the extraction parameters of Front Street Coffee's classic Italian blend, milk steaming temperature and thickness, and cup selection, while explaining in detail the importance of even dosing, distribution check methods, tamping direction, as well as steam wand angle and the beginner latte art push-heart technique, helping readers master the full process of consistently producing a standard latte.

Among the Italian coffees most familiar to Chinese people, latte undoubtedly takes first place. It is made by adding an equal amount or even more milk to rich, heavy espresso, and it belongs to the category of flavored coffee. The warmth of the milk reconciles the coffee's original bitterness into a smooth, sweet, fragrant, and easy-drinking taste. Even people who usually avoid coffee find it hard to resist the good flavor of a latte. Similar to cappuccino, latte is very suitable for a morning cup because milk makes up a relatively high proportion. Italians also often treat it as a stomach-warming drink, enjoying it with breakfast. Many people cannot distinguish latte from au lait: latte is an Italian milk coffee, using machine steam to heat the milk; au lait is a French method, heating milk directly over fire. Both taste smooth and luscious, with the main difference lying in the heating method.

Each shop's latte will differ slightly in the ratio of milk to coffee, the beans used, and extraction parameters. Overall, however, latte is simply a drink made by adding a large amount of milk to espresso.

Friends often message Front Street Coffee asking what they should learn if they want to become a barista, and whether knowing latte art is enough to start working. In fact, a barista has to do far more than make coffee; they also need to master a great deal of coffee knowledge, among which the most basic skills are extracting espresso and steaming milk. Many cafes use latte coffee as a test question during interviews to assess whether the interviewee has the basic skills of a barista.

To make classic Italian-style coffee, Front Street Classic Italian Blend coffee is recommended. This recipe is composed of coffees from Brazil, Indonesia, and Vietnam, using a dark roast, which can maximize the coffee's rich aroma and also makes it easy for everyone to extract abundant, dense crema. Whether making an Americano diluted with water or a latte paired with milk, it is very suitable and can be purchased at the Front Street Taobao store or the Front Street Tmall flagship store.

Espresso extraction parameters:

Coffee dose: 18 grams

Coffee liquid yield: 36 grams

Extraction time: 28 seconds

Milk parameters:

Milk type: whole milk

Steaming temperature: 50 degrees Celsius

Milk foam thickness: 1 cm

Milk-to-coffee ratio: 1:9

Cup details:

Cup capacity: 200 ml

Material: ceramic

How do you make a good espresso extraction?

1. Choose beans

Before making a latte, first prepare a suitable bag of beans. Here Front Street offers a few bean selection directions for reference: if you prefer nutty aromas, you can choose Front Street Specialty Italian Blend coffee beans or Front Street Colombia Huila coffee beans; if you pursue rich crema, Front Street Classic Italian Blend or Front Street Commercial Italian Blend is recommended; if you like the roasted flavor of spices and caramel, Front Street Golden Mandheling coffee beans would be a good choice.

Front Street Coffee usually recommends resting espresso beans for about ten days. Everyone knows dark-roasted beans degas faster than light-roasted beans, so why is the resting period still so long? The reason is that when making espresso, unlike pour-over, there is not enough space for the coffee to degas. If the beans are too fresh and degassing too vigorously, channeling is very likely to occur, resulting in unstable espresso extraction.

2. Adjust the grind size

After choosing the beans, it is time to look at the espresso grind size. This is basically daily work—adjusting the grinder.

The finer the grind particles, the tighter and denser the coffee bed, making it harder for water to pass through and noticeably lengthening the extraction time. Conversely, as the burr spacing increases and the particles become coarser, water passes through more easily and the extraction time speeds up.

Generally, Front Street will use the previous extraction parameters to make an espresso, controlling the time between 25 and 30 seconds, with a double dose of about 18 to 20 grams.

After excluding factors such as puck perforation, if the extraction time becomes longer, it may be surface over-extraction and internal under-extraction, showing sharp acidity, burnt bitterness, and astringency. In that case, the grind is probably too fine and can be adjusted slightly coarser; if the flow becomes faster, the stream is thick, the extraction is shallow, and the color is pale, then the grind may be too coarse, and it can be adjusted slightly finer.

3. Dosing

Dosing is the first step of distribution. Uneven dosing will greatly mislead and affect the subsequent distribution. Even with advanced distribution tools, it is impossible to completely eliminate the impact of the dosing stage on espresso extraction.

What is the impact of uneven dosing?

1. Differences in taste: with uneven dosing, distribution can no longer remedy the lower part of the coffee bed. Uneven density in the coffee bed leads to inconsistent puck thickness, and during extraction hot water flows at different speeds in different locations. With the slightest carelessness, perforation and channeling occur (the inertia of water makes it choose the easier path and ignore other paths), causing part of the puck to be under-extracted and part over-extracted, so every cup tastes unstable.

2. Extraction parameters vary too greatly, causing you to adjust the grinder for ages while the flow rate is still wrong, the time is still wrong, and the grind size is still wrong, wasting a pile of beans and still being unable to produce consistently.

So how do you practice dosing?

1. Prepare an electronic scale

Weighing the dose before every extraction is an essential operation for making perfect espresso. Even with a quantitative grinder, it is recommended to regularly check weighing accuracy; after all, even the most advanced machines inevitably have errors and malfunctions.

2. Rotate while dosing

Whether dosing by hand sweeper or direct output, as long as the coffee grounds do not fall completely vertically, under the influence of lateral acceleration the coffee bed will show a certain bias. For example, when dosing by hand sweeper, sweeping hard and sweeping lightly produce different results—the harder you sweep, the more it shifts left.

At this point, you need to rotate the portafilter at a constant speed while sweeping the grounds at a constant speed, so the grounds are evenly distributed to different positions in the basket. Of course, absolute evenness is impossible, but at least it is much better than fixed-position dosing.

4. Distribution

Light tapping and light knocking are two actions, but they are usually used in succession. Quickly tap the bottom of the portafilter with your palm to shake the mound of grounds evenly, then supplement with straight up-and-down light knocks, which can effectively remove large gaps in the coffee bed, make the mound of coffee grounds denser, and at the same time increase the amount of coffee the basket can hold.

Checking the distribution effect

During extraction, if you find that the flow of coffee liquid quickly becomes unstable and jumps greatly, and the color also quickly becomes lighter, you can judge that: there is a problem inside the puck (cracks have appeared), or uneven tamping has caused the part with less coffee grounds to be over-extracted (this is also very likely caused by uneven distribution leading to uneven tamping), or the distribution was uneven and the edge area was not covered by coffee grounds, so water flowed directly through there.

After extraction is complete, remove the portafilter and observe the shape of the puck. If there are no coffee grounds at the edges, or the coffee grounds have been washed up, or the puck has obvious gaps, then it is an extraction failure caused by uneven distribution.

4. Tamping

Tamping uses a certain amount of pressure to compact loose coffee grounds so that pressurized hot water can penetrate evenly. The direction is vertically downward. If tamped at an angle, the high-temperature, high-pressure hot water from the group head will seek the layer with the least resistance to penetrate, causing uneven extraction and also making the so-called channeling effect more likely.

The amount of tamping force and what kind of tamper is used do not matter much, as long as the grounds are compacted tightly. Therefore, keeping the tamping force consistent each time is more important.

How do you steam milk foam?

How do you steam the indispensable milk foam in a latte until it is silky? Front Street Coffee recommends using whole milk with a fat content of 3.2% to 3.8%.

In this experiment, Front Street Coffee used Bright Dairy fresh milk.

The process of steaming milk:

1. Place the steam wand at the center point of the milk pitcher, tilted 45 degrees toward the upper right near the edge of the pitcher, at a depth of about 1 cm. (This depth is fairly common, but for espresso machines with different steam strengths, this is only a suggestion.)

2. Turn on the steam from the steam wand, and slowly lower the milk pitcher so that the steam wand's steam holes contact the milk surface to create aeration, causing it to roll up and down and gradually expand in volume.

3. When aeration and foaming have expanded to the desired thickness, move the steam wand diagonally to the right of the center point of the milk pitcher near the edge of the pitcher, so that the milk foam rolls in a vortex pattern.

4. Control the angle and depth of the pitcher, fold in the coarser milk foam, and stop when the desired temperature is reached.

The principle of steaming milk

The first stage is steaming and air intake. Steaming means that when the steam wand's steam holes contact the milk surface, steam enters the milk to form milk foam.

The second stage is texturing. Texturing is using a vortex to fold air into the foamed milk, causing larger milk bubbles to break and break down into tiny bubbles, and allowing milk molecules to bond with one another, making the milk foam texture denser and finer.

Points to note: Steaming and air intake

Turn on the steam to begin air intake and observe the milk surface. If the milk is rotating but you do not hear a hissing sound, it means the air is not being incorporated. At this point, lower the milk pitcher a little so that the nozzle is slightly exposed to allow air intake. When you hear the hissing sound of air intake, stop lowering the pitcher and keep it still in place.

At this time, observe the movement of the milk. Normally it should be taking in air while the liquid rotates, forming a vortex.

The action of lowering the milk pitcher for air intake must be subtle and gradual, not too violent. When the sound indicates that it is more or less in the air-intake state, steady it and stop lowering.

The angle of the steam wand when steaming milk

Many people are used to placing the steam wand at the 2-3 o'clock or 9-10 o'clock direction of the milk pitcher (assuming the pitcher spout is at the 12 o'clock direction).

To find the angle of the steam wand, besides placing it in the correct position, the angle between the steam wand and the liquid surface is also very important.

If the steam wand is too vertical, most of the steam sprays downward, making it difficult for the milk to form a small vortex; if the steam wand is too flat, most of the steam sprays out in a parallel direction, making the small vortex too large and forming turbulence, which makes it difficult to control or causes the milk to overflow.

Practice methods for beginner latte art

After we have extracted a cup of espresso and steamed the milk foam, first swirl the espresso in the cup in a circular motion so that the crema adheres to the cup wall, then tilt the cup at about a 40-degree angle.

When pouring the milk, control the stream so it is not too large, letting the milk pierce directly through the coffee liquid to the bottom layer, then begin circling to mix the milk and coffee liquid. What needs attention here is that when pouring the milk, the stream should be thin, and it should be fixed at the center of the coffee liquid.

Then begin circling, mixing the milk and coffee liquid until about six-tenths full before starting latte art.

For the push-heart, pour milk at the 1/3 point of the cup, push out a semicircular arc, then immediately push another one forward. When forming a heart at the end, raise the milk pitcher higher and pour milk for a short while, letting the initial semicircular arcs surround the entire heart, and finally finish with a thin stream.

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