Latte art workshops take the white heart floating on a café latte and put it in your cup. Coffee art is created in the few seconds while textured milk is poured into espresso, and the shape holds or collapses depending on what happened before your jug was lifted. Pouring one is a physical craft, and the payoff is a design that lands with clean edges on demand.
Who Latte Art Workshops Are For
Our latte art workshops are open to café staff, food and beverage attendants working in hotels and restaurants, café owners, and coffee lovers with a machine at home. The two barista skills worth practising beforehand are pulling a shot and holding a steam wand at the right depth.
What Happens in Latte Art Training?
Our latte art workshops run for two hours in person at our Brisbane CBD, Adelaide CBD, and Gold Coast venues. Coffee, milk, jugs, and machines are supplied, and the milk is unlimited for the length of the session. Class sizes are kept small, and our trainers give you feedback pour by pour. Demonstration comes first, then the jug is yours.
Milk texturing, pouring height and speed, and the coffee designs those allow make up the practical content. Troubleshooting covers bubbles on the surface, a pour angle that floods the cup, and milk heated past the point where it holds a shape. Syrups and alternative milks are worked in for anyone who wants to take their coffee creations further.
The Espresso Base Every Design Starts With
Every design in our latte art workshops is poured onto a surface of espresso. Crema is the reddish-brown foam layer that forms on a fresh shot when hot water is forced through ground coffee under pressure. White microfoam poured onto that dark surface is what makes a design visible.
Crema also gives the surface enough body for foam to float on top instead of sinking through. Thin crema comes from under-extraction or stale beans, and a design poured onto it fades within seconds. Espresso for coffee art is pulled and poured within the same short window, and a gentle swirl of your cup evens the crema out before the milk goes in.
Milk Texturing and Microfoam
Milk texturing is practised hands-on in our latte art workshops, with a trainer listening in while you steam. Microfoam is steamed milk whose bubbles are too small to pick out individually. Its surface looks glossy and it moves in your jug like wet paint.
Air is drawn in first, with the steam tip held just below the surface until a soft tearing sound comes through. Your wand is then sunk deeper and angled to spin the milk. That spin shreds the larger bubbles down into microfoam.
Heat has a narrow window. Milk textured to between 55°C and 65°C tastes sweetest, and foam stability is highest at the lower end of that range. Past 70°C the whey proteins clump together, the foam turns coarse, and a sulphurous flavour comes through. Overheated milk cannot be brought back and is tipped out.
Pouring Technique: Height, Speed, and Position
Height, speed, and position are the three controls drilled through our latte art workshops. Tilt your cup to about 45 degrees before the first drop lands. Pour a thin stream from 5 to 8 centimetres above the surface, into the centre of your cup. From that height the milk drops under the crema and mixes into the coffee, and the surface stays brown.
Lower your jug to a centimetre or two above the surface once your cup is about two-thirds full, and increase the flow. Microfoam now floats on top and a white shape appears. Pouring from too high at this stage leaves the design cloudy with soft edges.
Position decides where the shape lands. The white appears where your stream hits. Drawing that point backwards across your cup stretches the shape out behind it, and lifting your jug at the end to run a thin stream through the middle cuts the finished line. Keep your elbow still and move from the forearm.
Basic Coffee Creations: Heart, Tulip, and Rosetta
Hearts, rosettas, and bears are the latte designs poured in our latte art workshops. A heart comes from one uninterrupted pour. Hold your jug low, let a white circle spread across the surface, then lift slightly and draw the spout straight through the middle towards the far rim. The circle pinches into two lobes and a point.
A tulip is stacked. Pour a small blob and stop. A second blob poured just behind it pushes the first forward, and two to four layers can be stacked that way before a single cut through the centre finishes them.
A rosetta uses the same low jug with a side-to-side wiggle. Start the wiggle at the far side of your cup and draw it slowly back towards you, leaving a row of leaves down each side. Lift your jug at the near rim, stop the wiggle, and pull one thin line straight through the centre for the stem.
Repeat the heart until it comes out the same way every time before you attempt the rosetta. The heart gives you the clearest read on whether your milk was textured properly.
Practising After a Latte Art Workshop
Practice between our latte art workshops and your next shift can be run on water instead of milk. If you have a machine with a steam wand, add two or three drops of clear dish soap to a jug of cold water and steam it the way you would steam milk. Otherwise, a handheld frother will whip the same mixture into a foam close enough to microfoam to pour with.
Food colouring or a splash of coffee in your cup gives you something dark to pour onto. The soapy foam behaves much like frothed milk and coffee on the surface, so full designs can be practised without a single bean.
Plain water and an empty cup cover the movements on their own. The wiggle, the pull-through, and the change from a high thin stream to a low fast one are all wrist movements, and they respond to repetition without any milk involved.
Change one thing at a time. A pour that varies in height, speed, and finish at once gives you no information about which of the three went wrong. Keeping the same cup, jug, and milk removes variables that have nothing to do with your hands.
The Value of a Latte Art Course for a Barista
A poured design tells you about the drink underneath it, and a clean one says the shot was fresh and the milk was textured to the right consistency. Repetition on a working machine is where technique settles into your hands.
Two hours in our latte art workshops end with patterns you can pour on demand, and a certificate of completion issued the same day. A design that matches what you intended are what our latte art class is for.
FAQs
Which Milk Holds a Poured Design Best?
Full cream dairy milk holds a poured design best, at roughly 3.2 grams of protein and 3.5 grams of fat per 100 mL. Barista-formulated plant milks add oil and stabilisers to imitate that composition.
Can Latte Art Be Poured Without an Espresso Machine?
Yes, using a handheld milk frother, which can whip milk into microfoam without a steam wand. Coffee brewed in a stovetop pot or a plunger also creates a dark base to pour onto.
Do Australian Baristas Compete at Latte Art?
Yes. The Australian Specialty Coffee Association runs regional Community Coffee Champs events across the states and territories, and those feed into the national Australian Latte Art Championship. The national winner represents Australia at the World Latte Art Championship.
