Hello, everyone. I’m Lu Ruijun. It’s no exaggeration to say that the most popular drinks in coffee shops are lattes and cappuccinos. Do you know how to make a simple and delicious latte? I’ve mentioned before that whether it’s latte or cappuccino, or the slightly rarer flat white, they are all coffee plus milk. It sounds like it’s a simple thing to drink these drinks, but I don’t know if you also think that the latte in the coffee shop tastes different from what we make at home, such as filter hanging, capsules, hand-brewed with milk. The latte in the coffee shop is richer in taste, very smooth in taste, and the milk seems to be particularly sweet. Sometimes it even feels a little like a milkshake. How is this done?

Latte has two elements, one is coffee and the other is milk. Let's start with coffee first, because after the coffee is brewed, milk needs to be added before it can be consumed. Therefore, the aroma and flavor of the coffee need to be stronger. Otherwise, the flavor and aroma will be diluted after adding milk, which will result in failure. How to make the aroma and flavor of coffee stronger?

The concentration of hand-poured coffee

The method of Italian coffee machines is to pressurize and brew coffee under normal pressure. For example, hand-brewed coffee usually uses coarser coffee powder, and uses time to fully moisten the entire coffee powder so that the entire coffee flavor can be slowly extracted from the coffee powder into the water. Referring to the Golden Cup extraction rate, the concentration of the whole cup of coffee will be between 1% and 2%, which means that out of 200ml of coffee, only about 2-4g comes from coffee powder, and the rest is water.

The strength of espresso

When an espresso machine brews, it will apply pressure to extract all the coffee ingredients, so it can compress the amount of water needed for extraction and the time needed to completely extract the coffee powder. Because the extraction time is shortened, finer coffee powder will be used to allow water to enter the coffee powder in a shorter time. Also, because of the applied pressure, even if finer coffee powder is used, water can still pass through the entire coffee powder layer in a short time. The concentration of espresso is about 10%, which is ten times the concentration of normal pressure.

Parameters of Italian coffee

The main parameters are particle size, amount of powder, time and amount of coffee flowing out. The other two that are easily overlooked are the pressure value of the coffee machine and the uniformity of the powder filling. Water that comes into contact with the coffee powder will affect the degree of extraction, so some machines can change the brewing pressure. Tamping is the part that tests the barista's skills. The perfect tamping should be that each part of the coffee powder has the same density, so that the water can evenly enter each grain of coffee powder when flowing through the coffee powder.

These parameters will affect each other. For example, if the particles become larger, the target extraction volume will be reached faster. Therefore, if only a single product is concentrated, the extraction with larger particles will tend to have a more sour and sweet flavor in the front.

Common espresso

There are three types of espresso in coffee shops: Single, Double and Ristretto. The difference between Single and Double is that you can brew one or two cups at a time.

Single is to use about 7 grams of coffee powder in 25 seconds to extract about 30 ml of coffee;

Double uses 15g of coffee powder to extract about 60ml of coffee in 25 seconds;

Ristretto uses a large amount of coffee powder to extract a small amount of coffee liquid. Last time I experienced it at the Shenzhen-Hong Kong Coffee Festival, I used 17 grams of coffee powder to extract 40 ml of coffee. This is actually more like Ristretto, which is also the coffee flavor we prefer, with less bitterness and a balanced sweet and sour taste.

However, in reality, when there is enough water, the taste is mainly determined by what you drink. The various parameters are only an auxiliary reference and not the only standard.

How to make sweet and smooth milk?

When we have a strong, sweet and sour coffee, the next step is to make sweet and smooth milk. In addition to the dense and smooth milk foam that everyone pursues, the milk also needs to be heated to about 65 degrees, which is almost scalding. The sweetness is the highest at this time. The Italian coffee machine uses steam to beat the milk, which can increase the temperature of the milk while foaming it.

The milk foaming process can be divided into two stages

The first stage is the frothing stage of beating air into the milk and the stage of continuously blending the milk foam with the milk;

The second stage can create the smooth and dense taste of milkshake.

Normally we also use a tea filter to make milk foam, but the softness of the milk foam is really different from that of an espresso machine.

The barista needs to control the frothing and fusion process, including the depth and angle of the steam pipe, which needs to be adjusted in time to ensure that the milk has the densest foam when it reaches the sweetest temperature, and is not too thick or too thin, so that the taste and taste of the milk and coffee can be blended together, and only in this way can beautiful latte art be drawn.

When you try to make a cup of latte by yourself, you will find that it is not easy to make a delicious latte. In addition to mastering the balanced filling and pressing technique, you need to adjust various parameters to extract a cup of rich and balanced Italian coffee. You also need to carefully observe and adjust the milk foam technique to find the moment that is slightly hot but not too hot so that the sweetness of the milk and the coffee can be perfectly combined when you take a sip of the latte.