adventures in latte art

Since Hannah's photoblog is her new source of awesomeness, this is Brian, attempting to revive our blog. So....here goes!

As many of you know, I have become increasingly more and more interested in the finer points of espresso making. This heightened interest has led me to the exploration of the most frustrating, thought-consuming hobby I've encountered yet - latte art.

Here is a sweet picture of some craziness that I can't even fathom yet:













Pouring latte art is a skill that requires the perfect marriage of three elements: a crema-laden espresso pull; temperature of the espresso, milk, and cup; and the ever-daunting micro foam.

Since starting down the path towards latte perfection, I have discovered that I am a rather inconsistent milk steamer. It's gotten better over the last week or so, but I still have a really hard time getting that variable to be the same every single time. I have also learned that having a dogmatic routine when pulling shots is the only way to get remotely consistent results.

Here's a couple of pictures of probably my best pours so far:


So, I think that I'm doing alright. What I really need to do is pay off my damn credit cards so that I can justifiably spend some cash on a nice/functional machine for the house.