- Everyone's looking.
It's fine okay.
And then it starts to get a little, right?
And then you--
Nope it got worse.
It got worse on that one.
So we're both coffee lovers.
- And we've always wanted to learn how to make latte art.
- So today we're headed down to Stumptown Coffee Roasters
in New York City to learn how.
- I'm Susie Locklier.
I work for Stumptown Coffee Roasters
and I've been a barista for over eight years now.
The plan is to teach you guys some latte art.
There are a couple of fundamental things
that go into making a beautiful latte.
So today I'm gonna teach you
how to pour a heart into a latte,
which is a fundamental design to start out
sort of your latte art journey.
And that entails just keeping your cup nice and tilted,
you're gonna pour that milk into that deep pool of espresso
and then you come down not moving very much
but the heart sort of blooms into your cup.
So we're gonna go through the steps of that.
So just go ahead and pour the milk into the pitcher,
right below that line.
- I'm fillin' this up.
- So there are two main parts of steaming milk:
stretching the milk,
which is introducing air,
which is that sound that you hear,
that (imitates steam escaping) sound.
And that's what takes your cold sort of flat milk
and turns it into nice creamy textured latte milk.
- Okay.
Once.
- And then grab the milk pitcher and give it a nice spin
because milk separates by density
so the foam is gonna float to the top
and the liquid is gonna sink to the bottom.
Tilt our cup here pitcher-distance,
right for the center.
- Oh that was terrible!
That doesn't even look like a heart!
- And all the way through.
- Oh!
- Beautiful, set that down on the counter.
- That's cute!
- Oh yay!
So that's beautiful.
You have nice contrast.
Great job!
Maggie, you did really well on your first try,
so now you're gonna go solo.
We're gonna try again.
Nice!
- Nope it got worse.
It got worse on that one.
- So we've made an improvement from the last one, right?
Because you actually can see a little heart!
- [Erin] Yeah!
- [Susie] Do you see it?
- So we tried our best,
but I think we should leave this up to the professionals.
Can you show us some of your other designs?
- Yeah, let's do it!
So first I'm gonna do a tulip.
That's what I'm the best at.
It's my tried and true design.
So you can't have good latte art without good coffee
'cause you need crema to float your milk on top of
and you also can't have latte art without well-steamed milk.
So they kinda work in conjunction with one another
to make you know your beautiful latte.
Next I'm gonna do a heart.
What really drew me to coffee was
the collaborative nature of it.
Coffee is hand-picked by one person.
It passes through a ton of hands before
it actually gets to the barista
and that sort of just harbors a lot of community.
It harbors connection between people.
The last design I'm going to pour is The Rosetta,
which is my nemesis because there's sort of
two sides of the brain: Tulip and Rosetta.
It just calls on different skills.
So the most important thing that I tell baristas
about latte art is that it doesn't taste like anything.
It's half of the equation,
but people eat with their eyes,
so you have to have well-steamed milk,
well-extracted espresso,
and a love for the craft to kind of have the whole package.
- Special thanks to Stumptown Coffee for having us!
(dramatic orchestral music)