Latte Art Tulip Crazy

Here's a collage of 13 latte art tulips I poured over the past week.  I've been having fun working on my technique with these, often trying to start with a rosetta-ish wave that ends up framing the tulip.  The other things I try to focus on are "pushing" each layer into the next to place them appropriately, and making sure that each layer of textured milk first gets dropped into darker, undisturbed espresso crema so that it ends up with great definition.

Tulip Season

I have to admit, I haven't really done a lot of latte art etching lately because I've been focusing so much on practicing my free-pour latte art.  But if you give me some suggestions on the Latte Art Requests page, I'd be more willing to post some new designs!  Here are some fun tulips I did today:

Free Pour Collage

Here are a bunch of latte art pours I did over the last few days.  Like I said in the previous post, I've been trying to work on rosettas a bit, with pleasing success.  Have a great Memorial Day weekend!

Latte Art is Profitable!

I made these cortados for a couple of guys during lunch last week.  They were sitting outside, so I didn't talk to them during their meal, but after they were done they came up to the coffee bar.  They said they were so interested in the latte art that they wanted to order two more drinks just to get a mini-demonstration! 

Video on Patch.com

 

Check out the video segment that Patch.com did after the writer, Ashley, came in for a lunch and loved the latte art she and her group got in their coffee drinks!

Dragon and Tulip

Poured and etched these lattes earlier in the week.  I quite like the tulip in the second cup, and of course the fire-breathing dragon is always fun to do!  I think next time I'll try to give the dragon more detail by giving him some tiny dragon arms.

Tulip To-Go

Yet another tulip for you all to take a gander at.  This one is in a to-go coffee cup though, which is slightly harder to accomplish... and it gets promptly covered up with the cup lid and sometimes the customer never even sees it.  That is, unless they take it over to the condiment bar to stir in their 4 packets of Splenda.

Tulip

Dig it.

Tulips

I have rediscovered the art of making tulips that I like.  I've been pouring these a lot in cappuccinos and lattes over the past couple of weeks.  I'm diggin the intense definition and contrast of some of them.  Not so much liking the fact that I can't consistently get the tulip centered and framed correctly, but I'll keep working on that.  My biggest issue has been the very first layer that I pour... The more defined that initial layer, the better the outer ring ends up.

Tulip

I've decided that based on my last two performances at Thursday Night Throwdown, I'm going to concentrate on pouring rocking tulips that look like this one I poured today.  Just gotta get the framing down right.

April Thursday Night Throwdown

At the April Thursday Night Throwdown at Octane Coffee I once again tossed in my $5 in an attempt to win $100.  20 baristas threw down this month.  I did well in my starting bracket of head-to-head pours and moved on to the "knock-out round" (quarterfinals), losing my match-up and failing to move to the semifinals.  Here are pics from the night (big thanks to my friend Charlie who took all these photos):

My first pour in the initial bracket.  I got both judges' votes to earn 3 points.

My second pour in the initial bracket.  Again got both judges to vote for my tulip: 3 more points and a definite advance to the next round.

My third pour in the initial bracket.  I went up against my friend Dave Overholser from REV Coffee.  Since I had already secured my spot to advance, I fooled around and made something up as I poured.  Looks kinda funky.  Dave-O got his 3 points, but they ended up not allowing anyone else from our bracket to advance.

My head-to-head pour against Sumi from Condesa Coffee during the quarterfinal knock-out rounds.  My pour is on the left.  His rosetta beat mine out hands-down, getting all 3 judges' votes.  Until next month...

Tulip

Some great definition and 5 layers.  Lots of space at the bottom of the cup and a bit of visible milk dribble... but I'm happy with it!

Tulip

I like this tulip.  It's nice and simple with some good definition.  A couple downsides though... it doesn't fill the whole cup and the heart on top isn't quite perfect.

Thursday Night Throwdown

This past Thursday I competed at Octane Coffee's monthly Thursday Night Throwdown, a free-pour latte art competition in Atlanta.  Now I've done this maybe 7 or 8 times over the last three years, and I've never won.  One time I got 4th place out of 40-something competitors, and another time I went head-to-head in the final pour-off and lost. 

This week I totally bombed it.  I can blame it on the different machine (one of the 2009 SERBC Aurelias), or different cups than I'm used to or whatever, but the bottom line is I choked.

This was my first pour.  Mine is the one of the left: 

(sorry about the cell phone picture quality! it was really dark...)

Right when I poured into the cup I had a bit of a white-out blob, so I spent too much time trying to bury it and left too little time to draw a pretty mediocre tulip.

My second pour felt much much better, but I was a little too shaky for a controlled pour.  I ended up with a pretty well-defined tulip, but I should have thrown in another layer to it before finishing it off.  This one actually earned me a split-decision vote, but it wasn't enough to advance out of my bracket:

On a good note, one of the Empire State South baristas I work with, Brandon Malcom, advanced to the finals and clinched the win.  He walked away with the $70 pot and a Hario Skerton hand grinder.  He actually faced off in the finals with Joseph Yancey, a Land of a Thousand Hills Coffee barista who helped me film a few of the videos I've posted here on Double Rosetta.

How-To Tuesdays: The Ring - Video

Occasionally I luck out and end up with a neat little ring that frames a latte art design pretty nicely.  I haven't really worked on controlling it to do it every time, but I've seen it in other people's pours enough that I know I want to do it consistently well.

After a little trial and error, it looks like these are the key things to do:

• Start filling the cup slowly without disturbing the crema, leaving a nice dark background to pour into.
• When you start getting close and releasing foam, make it a point to have the first layer of white be well-defined and not a fuzzy cloud.  For me, this means deliberate rocking/shaking at the right time to release the foam, and not doing it too early.  Pinch off the pour like you're doing a tulip.
• For the next part, it probably doesn't really matter if you want to end up with a tulip or rosetta or heart, but the big key is to push that second layer into the first, through a combination of pouring slightly faster and moving the pour forward while leveling out the cup.  That will insure that the second layer rests more or less inside of the first, with the first thinning out and becoming an outer ring.
• Finish off the design as a tulip or whatever you choose.

For these videos, I chose to stick with tulips, but I'll attempt this technique with hearts and rosettas later.

 

 

Rosettas and Tulip

Here's some latte art from the past week...

A rosetta that has some great definition but is a little narrow and doesn't fill the whole latte cup:

A rosetta with thicker leaves:

And a tulip in a cortado, slightly fuzzy first layer:

If anyone's interested, the Southeast Regional Barista Competition is coming up the weekend after next.  One of the baristas from my coffee shop is going to compete, and the whole thing be loads of fun, so if anyone wants to join me in watching the finals on Sunday, let me know!

How-To Tuesdays: Tulip - Video

I've decided to kick off a weekly feature: "How-To Tuesdays".  I'll give a more in-depth look at a specific latte art design each week, hopefully including a video with the post.  Feel free to comment and ask questions if you need clarification.

This week it's a tulip pour.  This particular tulip isn't that bad, though I like it when the outer ring is more defined than the one here.

My personal opinion on what makes a good tulip:

1. A good handle on how to "release" the foam into the cup right when you want to.
2. Finishing each layer off with a slight push, but not fully pulling through like you're finishing off a heart or rosetta.
3. Dropping each new layer into undisturbed crema for maximum contrast.
4. "Pushing" each layer into the previous one while leveling the cup at the same time, to make the layers rest nicely within each other.
5. A nice heart to finish it off.
6. All the other basics of good milk, contrast, symmetry, etc.

Snow Day Coffee

It's Snowpocalypse 2011 in Atlanta, and my coffee shop has been closed for two days.  Still, I needed to scratch a latte art itch, so I walked down to the espresso bar in my apartment complex and hopped behind the machine.  Here was my cappuccino:

Okay, the problem I have with making a wave (and rosettas for that matter) is that my rocking motion is never completely steady and symmetrical.  I'd call it more choppy and erratic.  I think if I'm ever to do consistently amazing rosettas, I have to find a way to make my wrist become a metronome.

I like this tulip I poured today. I've got to figure out how to control the "shading" in the petals. It frequently ends up in tulips and hearts, but I can't seem to create it consistently on demand.

And for a look back in personal barista history, take a look at the very first tulip I tried to pour almost 3 years ago:

Here goes the first post ever for Double Rosetta! Today's pour is a latte in a 12-oz. paper cup. Started with the rosetta and mozied on over to the small tulip, ending up with a bit of a flowiness from one to the other. Eventually I'll take pics with a better camera, but you're getting my slammin' cell phone photography for now.