Latte Art Hacks and Tips

How to use cocoa powder and milk substitutes

Hello again! This article is dedicated to the nuances and life hacks before drawing. Why do I use cocoa powder during latte art? How to use it correctly and why it will save you a lot of time and money? This super life hack will help you draw on the same milk a bunch of times without repeated whipping and without wasting liters of milk.

From the previous parts, you know how to hold a pitcher, a cup, how to beat milk, and which milk and espresso should be used for drawing. Now let's move on to drawing.

About cocoa

‍What's the point. First, do not take too much cocoa, it is better to sprinkle less so that the surface of the milk is slightly covered with powder. Secondly, do not take cocoa dispensers with large holes, it is better to take them with a grid, so that the cocoa is distributed finely and without lumps. 

Third point, use as dark cocoa as possible. Black and fine alkalized cocoa is your friend. There are a lot of brands, choose the darkest, most confectionary cocoa. The smaller and darker, the better. 

Workout without coffee and milk

‍What can you train for high-quality latte art without coffee and without milk? The first - the simplest and most understandable - stirring by hand with a cup. We poured some water into a cup, supposedly espresso, and practiced stirring with one hand. Honing the right moves.

Then, when you can already shake water in a cup without any problems, you can imitate the infusion of milk. At the same time, try to pour water from the pitcher into the cup and stir the liquid in it.

Third step, add a vertical circular motion to the pitcher's movement, so that you can stir the espresso milk in the cup even better, from both positions. At the same time, keep in mind that the trickle of milk should be thin, so that excess stains and dirt do not form on the surface of the drink.

After that, work out the tilt of the cup while drawing. We pour water into the cup until it is almost time to lay out the drawing, press the pitcher to the cup and as if we spread the milk on the surface of the cup, gradually leveling it, returning it to a horizontal position. During this workout, you develop a connection between the fullness of the cup and its tilt.

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Strikethrough

‍Even on the water, you can practice cutting the drawing or crossing out. What does it mean? We collect water in the cup as if the main element of the drawing is already ready and then, with a thin trickle of water, we try to cross out this invisible element, slightly lifting the pitcher during the strikethrough. Try to make a smooth trajectory and as thin a jet as possible. If you have problems with strikethrough, you can practice this movement on the water. By the way, you should immediately make the incision as perpendicular as possible to the handle, this will make your life easier in the future.

Avoid micro interruptions of the jet, when for a moment it starts to twitch from being very thin. Otherwise, bubbles will appear on the surface of the drawing during cutting. The trickle of milk should be stable, not interrupted, but at the same time go as thin as possible.

It is very important that during the practice of this movement, you have a connection between the hand and the pitcher, this subtlety. This way you will spend less coffee and milk, and you will have more chances to learn how to draw on a psychological level in the shortest possible time.

The most effective approach will be this: first we work out with water, conditionally, for five minutes, and then we switch to coffee. We tried to draw on coffee, looked at the errors, what happened, what didn't, and again we try to pour it on water. All these moments should occur in synergy with each other and in no case separately, for example, a day - training on water, and another day - on milk and coffee.

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Elbow and torso position

And I remind you, while you are working with water, once again pay attention to the work of the torso and elbows. Do they go up? does your torso bend? Take all these moments from the side on video and watch them back so that you can immediately control this moment. Or ask one of the more experienced baristas to take a look. The task is to avoid raised elbows and achieve the correct position of the torso.

Fake milk. Let's talk a little bit about fake milk during training and training. I did some experiments. And here's what we managed to identify, let's analyze the pros and cons.

Most importantly, this item is very economical in terms of cost. But the main disadvantage is that it is difficult to reuse fake milk. If with milk we can beat it, draw it, pour it back into the pitcher, add cocoa, and then draw it again several times in a row while the foam is still alive, then with fake milk this trick will not work. For the most part, it falls apart after one drawing. It is drawn almost exactly the same, but there is a problem in the elasticity. A little bit, but fake milk is more friable than regular milk. A big plus of working with it is that it is very convenient to work as a puring site. This is exactly putting foam on the surface. When working with fake milk, there is no stratification of milk and foam for a long time, so it is as convenient as possible to do puring.

A small digression is espresso. You can use dyes instead. Replacing espresso is much easier than replacing milk. Mix ordinary food coloring with a small amount of water and calmly draw with whipped milk. It is advisable to take liquid dye in tubes. 

And now an experiment. I took two pitchers. One with water and one drop of fake milk, and the other with three drops of fake milk. Let's see how big the difference is.

As practice has shown, three drops of fake milk per 170 ml of water allowed me to draw a repeated drawing 2 times using cocoa. The third time, the foam is already peeling off and the pitcher was leaking all water, not anything remotely resembling milk.

Water with one drop of fake milk showed itself, in the moment, even better. It turned out to draw a good repeated drawing on cocoa. The third time was worse, but it was also the case. If you draw fake milk with one drop instead of three, as suggested by the manufacturer, it really turns out to be more profitable than spending milk. And there is practically no difference in how much you drop this product into the water, and, as the experiment showed, with less fake milk, it turns out to draw even better.

How many times can I draw with regular milk?

‍In the continuation of the experiment, we will check how many times you can redraw latte art on real milk? I draw it once - everything is super. I poured it back into the pitcher, put some in a cup of the same espresso milk, and added cocoa. I draw it a second time and the result is exactly the same. The third time is the same. In total, it turned out to repeat the drawing on the same milk with espresso, with a few pinches of cocoa, thirteen times! On the seventh attempt, the milk had already begun to peel off from the foam, but it was still possible to draw even with this milk. The first five times - there are practically no differences.  And if you train in this way, it turns out excellent savings in both money and products.