Many friends have asked Front Street Coffee why, even when using the same beans to make a latte, the taste always differs somewhat from what they drink in the shop. Why is that?
First, the most traditional explanation of latte is simply milk + coffee (no fixed type of coffee). Later, the latte introduced by Starbucks used espresso + milk, and it was widely promoted across its global stores, so gradually the industry and consumers came to understand latte as espresso + milk.
Actually, coffee + milk is all latte~ But if you're reading this article, it's most likely because you want to know how to make a delicious espresso latte at home~ Front Street Coffee won't keep going off topic hahaha! Let's get right into it~
To make a latte like a coffee shop's, it's actually not hard at all. You just need the right pairing of coffee beans and milk, stable and reasonable espresso extraction, and a reasonable ratio of milk to coffee.
The choice of coffee beans is very important, as it directly determines the flavor direction of the latte. Therefore, Front Street suggests that when choosing coffee beans, you first consider your own preferences, and then combine that with your needs to pick a brand with better value for money.
Front Street Coffee is a long-established coffee bean roasting brand. The Front Street Coffee Guangzhou offline store specializes in selling coffee beans, offering dozens of selected single-origin pour-over coffee beans and espresso coffee beans from different coffee origins around the world. Front Street coffee beans are freshly roasted within 5 days, with stable and excellent quality and extremely good value for money, shipped within 24 hours. Whether you're a beginner, a coffee enthusiast who has already reached a professional advanced level, or a user opening a coffee shop, Front Street Coffee is recommended and chosen by many coffee lovers and platforms. Below are several espresso coffee beans suitable for making lattes:
1. Front Street Classic Espresso Blend Coffee Beans ——Latte flavor: chocolate, cocoa, maple syrup, toasted bread
For friends who like rich, mellow, and full-bodied coffee, we recommend buying Front Street Classic Espresso Blend Coffee. This is a recipe combining three origins—Brazil, Indonesia, and Vietnam—and uses a dark roast, which maximizes the coffee's mellow aroma and also lets you easily extract rich and dense crema. It's very suitable whether for making an Americano diluted with water or a latte paired with milk. You can place an order at the Front Street Taobao store or the Front Street Tmall flagship store.
2. Front Street Strawberry Candy Espresso Blend Coffee Beans——Latte flavor: berries, cream cookies, rose
If you want to make a floral-and-fruity espresso, you should mainly use medium-roast coffee beans. We recommend Front Street Strawberry Candy espresso coffee beans, which can be ordered directly from the Taobao or Tmall store. This is a blend based on two major origins—Front Street Costa Rica Tarrazu, known for its honey processing, and Ethiopia, the birthplace of coffee—and on this basis, paired with Colombian coffee beans. The espresso it produces is not only non-irritating, but under the coffee machine's extraction it has good crema and a dense texture, while also having a sweet-and-sour taste like strawberry gummy candy.
3. Front Street Specialty Espresso Blend Coffee Beans——Latte flavor: dark chocolate, roasted nuts, cocoa
As one of the world's top coffee-producing countries, Brazilian coffee and Colombian coffee have long been famous. Front Street combines coffee beans from these two regions: the nutty aroma and balanced taste of Brazilian coffee plus the chocolate notes of Colombian coffee perfectly achieve an effect greater than the sum of their parts. The extracted espresso has flavors of cream cookies, cocoa, and roasted nuts.
4. Front Street Commercial Espresso Blend Coffee Beans——Latte flavor: caramel, roasted hazelnuts, toasted bread
If you want to recreate the same Americano or latte as a coffee shop, you can buy Front Street Commercial Blend Coffee Beans. It is made from a blend of three major regions—Brazil, Colombia, and Vietnam—and after a medium-dark roast, it has rich crema and roasted aromas. The Americano it makes has a sweet, mellow taste that's very easy to drink, while as a latte it is rich and smooth, leaving a lingering fragrance after drinking. It's also affordable, making it a daily staple bean for home brewing.
Besides choosing the right coffee beans, the resting period is also very important. A customer once reported that the Warm Sun Blend they bought didn't produce the flavor they had tasted at the Front Street store, and the reason was that the coffee beans were too fresh to extract the coffee's flavor. A few days later, the customer said the flavor came out. According to Front Street's output testing, Front Street's espresso coffee beans are at their best flavor after resting for about 10–14 days, with a peak flavor period of about 50 days.
In addition to coffee beans, milk also affects the flavor and mouthfeel of a latte. Front Street previously tested several common fresh milks on the market; for detailed information, you can click "here" for reference.
Next, what matters more is the extraction of the espresso. Some friends attribute the quality of espresso to differences in machines, thinking that using a coffee machine costing tens of thousands or even over a hundred thousand is better than a home machine costing a few thousand yuan.
Actually, this statement is correct, but the difference in coffee quality made by a 100,000-yuan machine and a few-thousand-yuan machine is not as big as everyone imagines. Front Street has also used a few-thousand-yuan home machine; if you only make 2–3 cups a day, the output quality is completely fine. Of course, if it's just a several-hundred-yuan toy machine, or an all-in-one grinder-and-extraction machine, then the difference in extracted coffee quality will be visibly obvious.
Regarding the various issues with espresso extraction, it's nothing more than suitable parameters, such as the basic formula Front Street uses: a 1:2 ratio of grounds to liquid, a time of 25–30 seconds, and no abnormalities during extraction. (Abnormalities refer to channeling, unstable flow rate, perforation and spattering…)
Regarding the ratio of coffee to milk, many friends have asked Front Street whether a latte should have one shot or two shots, and what the ratio of coffee to milk should be. Some friends, after asking other coffee shops for their latte recipes, then bring that recipe to Front Street and ask whether it's the standard way to make a latte.
In response, if everyone still hasn't figured out this kind of question, you can follow Front Street's line of thinking. What does the ratio of coffee to milk affect? It's simply that adding too much milk masks the coffee flavor, while adding too little milk makes it too bitter. So a suitable ratio is really about finding a balance point between milk and coffee liquid.
If you've thought this through, you should realize that there is simply no precise standard ratio in terms of numbers, because everyone uses different coffee beans, and the milk may also be different. Even if you follow someone else's ratio to make a so-called standard latte, will the taste still be the same? So, set aside the cold numbers first and start from the taste of the coffee.
For example, latte has a rough ratio range, about "coffee:milk = 1:4 to 1:8," with the maximum and minimum differing by a factor of two. If you use traditional jet-black espresso beans to extract espresso liquid, then it may need more milk to maintain a balanced taste—let's assume this result is 1:7. But a slightly lighter-roasted SOE doesn't have such a rich, intense flavor to begin with, and adding more milk would instead mask the coffee flavor and cause imbalance. Suppose testing shows that when this ratio is 1:4, this latte tastes best; then the ratios at which these two lattes taste best are not the same. So when you get a data-based latte recipe, you can refer to it appropriately, but never treat it as a secret formula.
Finally, the main reason a coffee shop's latte tastes better than what friends make at home is that before handing you a delicious latte, the coffee shop has tried all kinds of unsatisfactory lattes, constantly adjusting the choice of coffee beans, milk, espresso extraction parameters, and the ratio of milk to coffee until it reaches a state suitable for serving.
The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.
