Latte Art Nessie

Slowly, but steadily I continue getting better at latter art. Still, about half of my pours come out as abstract blobs of crema and milk foam. Sometimes they are unintentionally less abstract, as in this case:

There’s only one explanation for this:

News Item:

EDINBURGH, Scotland — The Loch Ness monster is back — and there’s video. A man has captured what Nessie watchers say is possible footage of the supposed mythical creature beneath Scotland’s most mysterious lake.

Nessie is one of the famous sea monsters, but it looks like if you dig a bit, almost every body of water has its own monster. For instance, recently I learned that Black Sea upon which shores I grew up, is supposed to have its own Nessie – the so-called Karadag monster, sightings of which are reported since pre-WWII period. Karadag is a nature reserve of amazing beauty.

Even Lake Bill, an artificial pond upon which shores Microsofties like to drink beer, has its own monster sightings. I’ve heard rumors that Steve Ballmer took a swim in it after losing a bet.

Latte Art

Slowly, but steadily I am getting a little better at latte art. Once I’ll figure it out completely, I’ll make a couple of videos and write a how-to article. Meanwhile, head over to youtube and look at some of the videos that they have of rosetta pours. Neat, eh?

The Naked Barrista

I haven’t written about one of my very expensive but ultimately rewarding hobbies for a while, so I will try to correct this. You see, I like espresso and espresso based drinks. One of these days I’ll write a long post about everything that I ever learned about making them, but for now, here’s a short progress report.

There are hundreds of cooking shows these days. Even the British, famous for their indigestible cuisine, field two awesome shows: The Naked Chef and Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares. All of a sudden, London is referred to “City of Chefs.” In any case, I am sure that both Jamie Oliver and Gordon Ramsay prepare very tasty meals in their restaurants. But I am also pretty sure that if you order an espresso or a cappuccino there, you’ll get the undrinkable crud. Jamie Oliver, for instance has a FrancisFrancis! – a beautifully designed, but highly mediocre espresso machine in his home kitchen. Would one show about coffee and coffee training for celebrity chefs and their restaurant staff be too much to ask for?

As my financial means increased, I’ve progressed through a series of espresso machines. For a year or so I’ve been a proud owner of a Reneka Techno. It’s a common choice amongst espresso enthusiasts who always wanted a La Marzocco machine, but finally gave up, as new ones cost too much (around 6K) and used ones are hard to come by and troublesome. The scarcity of used La Marzocco machines is a mystery to me – Starbucks replaced almost all machines that it used to own with superautomatics of unknown to me make, reportedly forcing the closure of the US La Marzocco factory. Where did they all go?

Anyway, strange as it is, but a French company, not an Italian one is making a machine that mostly replicates a La Marzocco for home users. So, what separates this machine from hundreds of competing espresso makers?

Well, for starters it uses a rotary pump instead of the most common vibratory one. Rotary pumps give a steady pressure, unlike vibratory ones that provide the same pressure in a series of very rapid pulses. This is similar to analogue vs. digital sound, and just slightly less controversial, as the results are easier to compare. For the record, I like analog sound better too.

The second highly desirable feature is the separate high powered steam/water boilers. Add to that a digital temperature control circuit tunable to 1F and you got yourself a great machine. With this little bit of digital trickery you get in-boiler temperature stability that the bigger machines get through great size and painstaking adjustment. The temperature stability at the group (the coffee holder) is another question altogether, but it’s not bad there too.

Of course, to get all that you have to suffer some difficulties – like having a 220V outlet installed. This is not too difficult – you just need to have access to two 120V lines on a different phase and have your electrician put in a special circuit breaker. You also need a direct water connection, as rotary pump machines don’t have water tanks and need to take in water at water line pressure. This is not too difficult as well – you need to have your plumber to lead a flexible copper water line from the sink. If you install the machine near the sink, you can also tie the coffee machine’s drain into the sink drain. I am not as lucky – my machine drains into a big vase.

Here is my Reneka Techno with the side cover removed. You can see the pump as well as the badly placed pressure gauge. Pressure is adjustable, mine is set at about Schomer-recommended 8.5 bar.

A new trend in espresso shot-pulling is the so-called naked portafilters. Techno came with an extra portafilter, which I had modified at Home-Espresso.com for only $25. The idea is that you get to see the cream formation and flow of espresso though the filter bottom, noting the evenness of extraction. Also, crema touches fewer surfaces, ending up mostly in the cup.

I’ve ordered some coffee from Victorola, this is a shot of their Streamline Espresso. The crema looks a little light, but espresso did not taste sour at all. Is that the mysterious “tiger flecking“? I don’t know. In any case, this was a trial shot, I’ll keep playing with my new toy and new coffees from Victorola.

I am sad to announce my continuing suckage at the fine craft of latte art. Look and laugh at this misshapen rosetta. Ewww. Well, practice makes perfect.


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Drink At Joe’s

Believe it or not, but finally there’s a coffee place in Manhattan that I can recommend. It is hard to believe that this lasted for so long. Read this famous NYT article by William Grimes to understand just how miserable the situation was. So when livejournal user mityanyc first told me about this new place I was a bit skeptical, but it turned out to be the real deal.

The cafe is somewhat unimaginatively called “Joe” and looks just like any other espresso place in the Village. A small space with a few tables barnacled with PowerBooks toting hipsters and paper grading NYU professors, a shelf with pre-packed coffee beans, a large espresso machine, a couple of commercial grinders and a counter full of pastries.

What sets this place apart is the fact that the owner, Joe Jonathan, actually spent some time researching the subject of proper espresso drink making. The machine is a La Marzocco. The coffee – from a very high quality roaster and is ground to order. The tamper (I think it was an ErgoTamper) perfectly fits the portafilter and the barrista actually knows how to use it. And guess what – every latte is served with a rosetta.

For the purposes of this review I ordered an espresso ristretto and a small latte. The latte was perfect – “microfoam“, rosetta, sweet tasting milk. Very tasty. Espresso was passable – good amount of crema, not too bitter. The color of the crema was brown, without overextracted whitish inclusions, but also without “tiger striping” and that brown reddish glow. A very respectable result, similar to what I get at home most of the time. With a few tries and very fresh shipment of Schomer’s beans I get tiger striping/flecking and the espresso tastes better.

I wanted to buy some beans to review, but they did not have any espresso roast left.

While I stood outside taking a picture, two men walked by me, and one pointed to “Joe” and said to the other: “ah, so that’s the place that everyone’s talking about”. Indeed.

Joes is located at 141 Waverly Pl., it’s just past Waverly Restaurant (see picture at the bottom of this post) that looks like the diner where Seinfeld characters hung out. The closest subway station is West 4th Street on IND. 6th Ave line.

Happy New Year!

I created some postcards to send out via email, but my contact list is messy, some of the emails are old. I am hungry and thirsty (there’s a bottle of Veuve Clicquot and some Vietnamese food waiting for me), so if you did not get a postcard, here they are:


I have to admit that the I copied the idea from a postcard that was sent to me by Reneka – the maker of my coffee machine. I’ve made this latte art pattern with their machine – no Photoshop, so I am hoping they are not going to hold this plagiarism against me. The postcard they sent features a cup with “05” in it – I added a pine tree looking rosette.

Ach, We Call It Coffee With Milk Around Here, Ya Latte Drinking Surrender Monkey

After many, many tries I think I am finally getting closer to figuring out “latte art” – making patterns on the surface of espresso crema with specially steamed milk. Here’s my best attempt to date:

It’s a weird hybrid of a rosetta and an apple.

To see much better examples of latte art, see this outstanding guide or just look over google’s results.

David Schomer has a commercial video for sale (which is terribly overpriced – $49.95 for 18 minutes), but fortunately there are a few free demonstrations out there.

I have to warn you, watching these is absolutely hypnotic :

http://www.coffeegeek.com/video/artigiano.mov
http://www.coffeegeek.com/tempphoto/sammy.mov
http://www.latteart.org/latteart.htm (click on “demo” for the movies).

Once I figure out the process completely I’ll post my own tutorial.