Barista-style Coffee At Home
This is a guest blog from the boy, who is luckily a Starbucks trained coffee master. In Lou of spending some genuine quality time with each other, I've invited him to guest blog and share some top coffee making tips from home. I hope you enjoy! If you have any questions or want to make a specific style of coffee from home, leave a comment below and I'll see what I can do.
Professional barista-style coffee needn't be complicated; to be honest, most of the adverts you see on TV are little more than good marketing campaigns that confuse the consumers. So I have set out a few guidelines to help those of you stuck at home during this crisis. Most of these recipes can be made using little to no knowledge of coffee culture and with minimal use of utensils.
The first recipe is going to show you how to make a latté at home.
A café latté is Italian for coffee milk. And it's as simple as it sounds, it only has two ingredients: freshly brewed espresso and hot steamed frothy milk. The perfect latté should be served warm and only have one centimetre of foam on top. It's tough to distinguish one roast of coffee from another; especially if it's diluted with milk.
Café Latté
To make you will need the following utensils and ingredients,
-1x saucepan
-1x blender
-1x cup of milk (8oz)
-1x Jar of instant coffee
-1x kettle
-1x glass cup or mug
-1x thermometer
-1x spoon
To start heat the milk in the saucepan and preheat your cup with hot water from the kettle. Heat the milk gently and don't boil it. Boiling the milk will burn it and leave it tasting a little bitter. Use the thermometer to keep an eye that it doesn't go above 66°C, once it has reached this temperature take it off the hob and pour the milk into the blender.
Blend the milk, so it froths up just a little, don't go overboard remember you only want a centimetre of foam on top. Empty the water from the cup and place two teaspoons of instant coffee at the bottom, put a tiny amount of water about 3oz or less of boiling water to dissolve the granules.
After you have done that top off the drink with the warm milk and use the spoon to put a small layer of foam on top, enjoy while it's still hot.
This drink is very basic and will open up your eyes to the world of coffee culture. It's the bread and butter of basic beverage knowledge. It's versatile, and if you want to flavour it, you can add syrups you can buy at most supermarkets or improvise. Use flavourings and sugar to adjust to your taste buds. You can use alternative dairy milk if your allergic to dairy. If you fancy being a little extravagant, you can cut out a stencil from a piece of cardboard and sprinkle cocoa powder over the top to create many beautiful designs to show off to the family and guests.