Hey there. This edition I wanted to focus on equipment and technique. One of the things that helps with mastering any latte art is knowing the way that things happen, why they happen, and how to keep your equipment the same. I always stress to students about spout alignment. This determines the outcome of what happens on the surface of the drink.
An easy way to check if the spout is aligned before you make a pitcher purchase is to take a pen and literally see whether it aligns or not. All you veterans out there would have a personal preference already and that’s something that you need to take note of, but I find this simple exercise is a great tool to check the quality of the product you’re working with.
When we start to apply some of these techniques it’s extremely important that we repeat strongly, and at the same distance every time. The distance between the spout and the surface controls how much material (milk texture) pours onto the surface of the drink.
The further away the spout is, the less material that will appear on the surface. The closer you are to the surface with the spout, the more material will appear on the surface of your cup.
Try and keep the contacts that you make really clean. It’s easy to do that when you tilt the cup. The tilt controls the amount of material that goes into the cup. The greater the tilt, the greater the content in the cup.
This is really important to understand because if you master this tilt, you’ve basically mastered the total control of a pour.
