How to make an extra large and small latte best? How much milk should you add and how much powder should you use in espresso? What ratio is the most authentic?

As we all know, latte is an Italian coffee made from espresso and milk. Since there is no fixed standard, the latte in each coffee shop is made according to the owner's own understanding, so we can see that the sizes of latte cups in different coffee shops vary, ranging from 400ml to 200ml.

Many friends also want to reproduce lattes of the same size in a certain store at home, but after actually making them, they find that the taste is not as good as imagined. Either the coffee taste is too weak, or the coffee taste is too strong, and it doesn't work anyway. So a friend wrote privately to Qianjie how to make lattes with different sizes to taste good.

How to make different cups of latte to taste better? To be reasonable, whether coffee tastes too strong or too weak, it is essentially the result of the imbalance between coffee and milk. Many friends don't make too many adjustments to the plan when making different cups of lattes, just simply add and subtract milk. If you want to make a large cup of latte, add milk on top of the original, and reduce milk for a small cup. Such a practice will naturally affect the concentration of the coffee and eventually lead to an imbalance in the taste.

This is certainly not impossible, but it can also be done if the taste suits your taste preference. Just if it doesn't suit your preference and you want to make a latte with the same cup size as the coffee shop and a balanced taste, then you can't just change the amount of milk. In terms of the coffee extraction plan, we also need to make corresponding adjustments. Take Qianjie as an example. The latte coffee cup on Qianjie has a capacity of 300ml. Therefore, lattes made on Qianjie usually use 20g of coffee powder to extract 40ml of coffee liquor, and then add it to 200ml of milk and a layer of 1 cm thick milk foam. The ratio of coffee to milk is 1:5.

Because the coffee beans used are generally medium-to-deep baked Italian combinations, such as the Qianjie Italian classic combination, the flavor is expressed as chocolate, caramel, nuts, and cream, and the taste will be relatively strong, so you need to mix it with more milk to balance the taste of coffee. The latte made in this way can just fill a 300ml coffee cup (due to the milk foam). The taste of coffee and milk is balanced and the sweetness is extremely high. The flavors include chocolate, butter cookies, and caramel, which is very good.

So if we want to use the same coffee beans to make different cup sizes of lattes, such as a larger or smaller cup size, and then the taste does not change too much, then there are two options we can make.

Option 1: The first method is to adjust the powder amount and grind of the coffee while the overall proportion remains unchanged. What does it mean? That is, the ratio of extracted coffee liquor is still maintained at 1:2, and then the ratio of coffee to milk is maintained at 1:5. Then the amount of powder is adjusted to change the liquid amount of espresso coffee, which in turn affects the added milk, and ultimately achieves the taste. The result of a change in cup size.

For example, if we use a cup with a capacity of 240ml to make latte coffee, then the amount of powder used can be reduced from the original 20g to 18g, and then extracted according to a powder-to-liquid ratio of 1:2 to obtain 36ml of coffee liquor. Then add 180ml of milk with a layer of 1 cm thick foam according to the ratio of coffee to milk of 1:5, and finally we can get a latte with the same flavor as the previous 300ml cup. Although the cup size has been reduced, because the concentration and extraction rate are the same as before, the taste will not be much different from the previous cup of coffee, only the overall liquid volume has been reduced. The same goes for making a larger latte, which is very simple.

Front Street also mentioned that we need to adjust the grinding degree of coffee powder together with the reason is very simple. If light changes the amount of powder, then the extraction time will change simultaneously due to the increase or decrease of the amount of powder, because the amount of powder adjustment is relatively large. This will affect the extraction rate of coffee. If there is less powder, it will be easy to extract insufficient, and if there is too much powder, it will be easy to extract excessively. Simply put, coffee is prone to negative tastes such as sour and bitter. Then if we don't want this to happen, we need to coarse or fine grind according to the increase or decrease of the amount of powder.

Option 2: Of course, in addition to changing the extraction parameters, we can also use other methods to make delicious lattes with different cup sizes. For example, changing materials. When we want to make a small cup of latte, we can choose to replace milk without changing the coffee extraction parameters (powder amount, liquid weight, grinding). For example, use higher concentration purified/concentrated milk. This kind of milk will have a stronger taste because of its higher concentration, so even if we reduce the amount of milk, we can ensure that the coffee taste will not overshadow the milk, so that we can make a good cup of latte with small cups. It's over ~

So if we want to make a large latte and don't mind if the cup is too large, we can also choose to extract 2 servings of espresso, or extract 2 servings of espresso and reduce the concentration to make it. In this way, you can ensure that you can make a large cup of latte that is equally delicious without changing the parameters. In short, there are many solutions, but how to do it depends on personal preferences, even if you just simply add milk and reduce milk. Qianjie here is just to share the making ideas with you, as long as the final coffee can meet your taste preferences ~

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