Tips for making Coffee can only use espresso.

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Imagine if you go into a third wave coffee shop and order a cup of fresh milk coffee (Flat White) and receive a perfectly extracted, delicious fresh milk coffee ⋯but no coffee lace. Will the world be in chaos or irrelevant?

In the world of boutique coffee, coffee bouquets seem to have become a necessary part. We not only appreciate it, but also count on it. But the controversial question is, apart from being good-looking, what benefits does it bring to your coffee? We measure how good or bad it is for your coffee from six different angles.

1) taste

Milk coffee is basically a combination of milk and espresso. But how to mix the two can greatly affect the taste of coffee.

Barista Hustle's Matt Perger conducted an experiment on coffee flowers in May 2015. Using the same ratio of espresso to milk, he made two cups of foamy coffee, both with a flower pattern. Then he stirred one of the cups so that the milk was evenly distributed (the pattern was destroyed) and tested it blindly.

Result? If you pursue a cup of coffee with a balanced taste, you should not like coffee flowers. If you only talk about contrast and symmetry, pull flowers can create a beautiful pure coffee fat 360 degree ring, but the taste is not mellow. But if there is no flower, the sweet, bitter and exciting layer of coffee fat will be mixed with milk to create a strong flavor.

However, there is a third option-you can make your coffee beautiful while avoiding the joys and sorrows of the first sip. Scott Rao is one of those who advocate this: first put some milk into the espresso, then mix well the sweetness and bitterness of removing the coffee fat, and then use the flower to finish the whole cup of drink. By doing so, you can remove the joys and sorrows of the first bite. And I personally think that a more uniform color of coffee will also make the flowers look better.

2) Multi-sensory taste experience

When you drink a cup of coffee, you can experience the taste, aroma and taste. These elements combine to form the taste of a drink. But some people will say that taste contains more than these three elements.

"some people see taste as a multi-sensory experience, including the senses of the eyes and ears," Little Black Coffee Cup's Ida Steen, author of SCAE Sensory Education, said in an interview. "it's as if Olivia Auell once wrote about the influence of music on his SCAA blog:" if you have participated in Re:co Symposium this year, you should have experienced drinking coffee under different music. Slow and scary concerts bring bitterness, while bright concerts bring sweetness. "

Meanwhile, a 2014 study on taste at the University of Oxford found that arranging salad vegetables into works of art increases its taste.

So the taste of your fresh milk coffee depends on several factors: the coffee itself, but also the surrounding flavor (guests wearing strong perfume, or some hot food), the music being played, and possibly coffee flowers.

3) the value of heart

The gourmet center, Michelin Restaurant, the place where delicious food is served, also attaches great importance to the appearance of delicious food during the meal.

Carefully presented cuisine is not just a symbol of delicacy. What's more, it reflects a series of prepared stories: a whole group of experienced people try their best to provide the best products. And they think the food is worth their attention.

Many studies, including the one from the University of Oxford above, have also found that a good dish can help to increase the monetary value of food.

And coffee has a similar truth. A beautiful flower symbolizes all the efforts behind the drink: someone is interested in coffee, spends countless hours practicing brewing, and now pays more attention to making a high-quality drink that tastes as good as it looks. Of course, the important thing is that that person needs to carefully mix the espresso formula to be considered perfect. But the beautiful flower-pulling means that they are really interested in it.

4) Micro-bubble vs art

One of the most infuriating flowers is shoddy microbubbles. That is, when your barista gives you a double swan with a thousand Rosetta, it looks very beautiful but the foam is not as thick as 0.1mm. The taste is the same as a cup of French coffee with milk.

Foam coffee with sweet milk foam can provide the best body feeling: after a sip, you can feel a thick taste with a unique blend of sweet softness.

For me, it's a shame to sacrifice the taste for a beautiful flower that will be distorted at the first sip. This should not happen, however, coffee is needed to find the right balance.

5) the value of Instagram

Social media is an essential part of every coffee business in the world, and it is also the life of many coffee fans. For coffee shops, every compliment is a heartbeat, and every sharing is nourishment. They can create publicity and attract new customers. But if your plan is to put more emphasis on taste than to pull flowers, your Instagram should only have your mother and a polite friend who likes tea.

In Instagram media, the only sense is appearance, so pull flower is very important. It can attract people who have not drunk your coffee to follow you.

6) only for the sake of art

If you have ever seen the World Coffee draw Competition, you should know how beautiful it can be. For these artists, what they create is pull flowers, and home coffee is just a medium. If someone tells them that their coffee is overextracted or lacking in taste, they will ignore it.

In fact, the judges in this competition don't care about coffee at all. The scoring mechanism only focuses on visual factors: the creativity, feasibility, consistency and color contrast of the flower design.

Some complex designs require the use of food pigments, and the production time is so long that I question whether the coffee will get cold when drinking it. Imagine being in a busy coffee shop-waiting for a beautiful cup of coffee at room temperature after 30 minutes.