Think you have what it takes to beat the barista? Throughout the festival Cravendale’s resident barista will be offering marvellous milk masterclasses from how to achieve the perfect foam to how to create impressive latte art at home. Here are some tips from coffee consultants DunneFrankowski....
Think you have what it takes to beat the barista? Throughout the festival Cravendale’s resident barista will be offering marvellous milk masterclasses from how to achieve the perfect foam to how to create impressive latte art at home.
Here are some tips from coffee consultants DunneFrankowski to make sure you come to the festival prepared!
1. Always use fresh milk - would you eat old fruit? For most of us the answer would be no. Fresh fruit is sweet, cidic and tasty and it’s the same with milk. Fresh milk will taste sweeter and make a creamer texture when steamed for coffee. The higher the fat content the creamer the milk becomes. Milk develops bacteria as it ages making it harder to steam and texture correctly.
2. Always use cold milk - when steaming milk always use milk straight out of the fridge. The colder the milk is, the longer it takes to heat up, which gives us a longer time to texture it and turn it into a silky smooth liquid. The longer you texture the smoother the milk becomes.
3. Stretch the milk within the first five seconds - in the coffee world we refer to stretching milk when we insert air bubbles into it. Inserting air bubbles into the milk is the first step to creating micro foam and depending on how
much air you insert you can create thin or thick micro foam. The large bubbles we insert then get diluted during texturing, hence the reason why we insert air bubbles right at the start to give ourselves as much time as possible to dilute them.
4. Too much banging doesn’t do it a lot of good - all the work which you need to do to the milk should be one on the steam wand, having the milk textured and heated properly ready to be poured. If all is done correctly then you don’t need to bang the jug. By banging the jug you are helping gravity come into effect and separate the milk and foam, which you then have to re-texture to pour. The only time you should bang the jug is when you have bubbles on the surface of the milk, which need to be popped.
5. If you don’t see a pattern you’re too far away - when you start to pour and you want to see a pattern of sorts appearing, it should. If nothing is coming out it usually means that the tip of the jug is too far from the surface of the milk. You might have to change the angle of the cup or the jug to get the tip of the spout closer to the milk.
6. Follow the steps - if you don’t have a good espresso, you won’t have a good coffee at the end. Imagine you start with garlic in a sauce - if you burn it the sauce just doesn’t taste right. The same goes for milk - you need to texture and heat the milk correctly to be able to pour a pattern correctly and get the right texture for the correct drink.
Photo credit (main): Kate Beard