How many times have you been pouring your morning double rosetta and wished that some machine was invented to automate the task? If you’re like me, that happens… well, never. This article and video from the Wall Street Journal online is on the scene.
By CARI TUNA
August 14, 2008; Page A1
For the past eight months, Wayne Mathias has been perfecting his pour.
Every morning, the 47-year-old San Francisco legal-records analyst makes a cup of espresso, froths some milk and then decants it into the cup with a rhythmical flicking motion. When all goes well, the delicate white swirls form a heart or a fernlike leaf called a “rosetta.” Sometimes he gets a formless blob instead.
Latte art or the skill of creating designs in a cappuccino has long been the trademark of a well-trained barista. But now a printer invented by Oleksiy Pikalo is making that job much easier. WSJ’s Cari Tuna reports.
“I don’t know what that is,” said the Hawaiian-shirt-clad Mr. Mathias one recent morning, staring at an amorphous lump of foam in his cup. He has experimented with different brands of milk to improve his success rate. Now he’s considering upgrading his $400 espresso machine to a $1,200 model.
Once an obscure skill practiced by a handful of baristas, latte art is invading the home. Amateur artists have posted thousands of photos and videos of leaves, flowers and swans made in foam, on Web sites like YouTube, Rate My Rosetta and CoffeeGeek.
Coffee shops offer classes in creating designs, and latte artists organize winner-take-all cash contests, or “throw downs,” in which amateurs challenge each other, as well as local professionals. Espresso-machine vendors are doing a brisk business in special pitchers and custom steam tips that are affixed to machines to aid milk frothing. One online retailer says sales of its $79 “Latte Art Beginner’s Pack,” with instructional DVD, frothing pitcher and milk thermometer, are up 65% this year.
The pastime is not for those with weak wills — or shallow pockets. High-end home espresso machines sell for as much as $7,000. Beginners can go through multiple gallons of milk a week as they practice.
Jiggling the Pitcher
One technique involves making elegant designs by jiggling the pitcher while pouring milk into espresso; another calls for a toothpick or thermometer to draw shapes like animals and faces in a drink’s foam after it is poured.
Coffee experts say latte art originated in Italy, the birthplace of espresso. Today baristas from London to Sydney do it, too.
In the U.S., latte art was largely unknown until the late 1980s, when Seattle coffee-shop owner David Schomer caught the bug. He says he had long admired the rippling patterns made as buses rattled his roadside coffee cart, shaking his hand as he poured cappuccinos and lattes. Then he saw photographs of Italian rosettas in a coffee magazine and became obsessed with mastering the technique.
Mr. Schomer released an instructional video in 1995 that sold thousands of copies and sparked a wave of interest among professional American baristas. It took YouTube and home videos to bring the subtle milk-pouring moves to the masses.
One key to latte art is the consistency of the milk. Larry Cohen, a vice president at Microsoft Corp., has spent months working on it. When the milk is foamed just right, he says, it feels like using a pencil when pouring it.
In his quest for the perfect cappuccino, Mr. Cohen has read books, watched a how-to DVD and set up a private lesson on “fundamentals” with a barista in his Bellevue, Wash., home. “It’s kind of like making wine,” he says. “There are so many different variables.” But the software executive says that even after a year, he’s still not ready to focus on latte-art designs, though he doodles with milk and has “perfected the amoeba.”
‘Fluid Canvas’
Some aspiring artists concentrate on the pour. First-timers mistakenly think they can paint the design on top of the coffee, says Nicholas Lundgaard, a 23-year-old software engineer in Houston, who took up latte art three years ago after seeing photos on the CoffeeGeek Web site. Actually, it’s “a fluid canvas, where shapes fan out from the place you’re pouring,” he says.
Mr. Lundgaard spent evenings hunched over his espresso machine, studying exemplars on YouTube and rehearsing his “wiggle,” the back and forth motion of the hand pouring milk. To avoid wasting costly milk, Mr. Lundgaard practiced with water, switching to milk every now and then to gauge his progress.
Another foam artist, Milwaukee pathologist Robert Hall, says he had to pour five or six drinks a day for a year before he could get a rosetta right every time. One big obstacle was his wife’s preference for skim milk, which produces stiffer, less yielding foam than milk with lots of fat, he says.
Not everyone wants to suffer for their art. After seeing a latte-art video, Oleksiy Pikalo, a 31-year-old electrical engineer from Somerville, Mass., decided there had to be an “engineering approach.” Using a kit and spare parts found on eBay, he built a programmable computer printer that stamps designs — such as words or corporate logos — on foamed drinks in edible brown ink. One design shows a kingly figure saying, “Can your latte do this?”
Mr. Pikalo presented his invention at a national computer-graphics conference this week and has started a company, OnLatte, to sell his machine, at a tentative price of $1,500. His YouTube video has drawn more than 818,000 views and 2,500 comments.
Some latte art is unconventional. Last year, James Hoffmann — winner of the 2007 World Barista Championship, a competition for professionals — launched a “slightly absurd latte art challenge” on his blog. He urged readers to “pour somewhere stupid.” In response, baristas and amateurs posted photos of rosettas and hearts topping espressos poured into a cash register, a matchbox, a person’s bare hands and an open mouth.
A spokeswoman for Starbucks Corp. says “foam art” isn’t part of the company’s barista-training process. “I don’t think we want to legislate creativity,” she says. But some Starbucks baristas do compete in latte-art competitions, she adds.
Taste and Texture
Not everyone likes the direction latte art is heading. Espresso connoisseurs complain that too many people focus on the art, at the expense of what’s underneath.
CoffeeGeek editor Mark Prince says the “frenzy” over latte art can draw attention away from drink quality. Chris Baca, a Western Regional Barista Championship winner, who routinely pours shapes in customers’ cups, says he’s tiring of latte-art buzz. “It’s part of what we do, but we like to focus more on the coffee,” he says. “You could have a drink that’s totally beautiful with the most amazing design…and tastes like garbage.”
For Mr. Mathias, the aspiring latte artist in San Francisco, art, taste and texture are all part of a good cup of joe. Still, he hopes someday to enter the Whole Latte Love latte-art video competition, sponsored by the online distributor of espresso equipment.
After months of practice with a thermometer, Mr. Mathias says he can now tell when his milk is heated to the ideal temperature — between 150 and 155 degrees Fahrenheit — by the feel of the stainless-steel pitcher alone. He’s learned to recognize the “bacon-frying” sound the liquid makes when it’s getting enough air, and he’s almost always able to make it swirl in the whirlpool motion that lets the bubbles mix most evenly.
Mr. Mathias says it’s dangerous to overthink the process. “You kind of have to be in the groove,” he says. “On the best days it’s effortless.”