How to make the perfect flat white

Extraction tips:

When producing your espresso, here are a few simple steps so you can promote an even extraction (meaning that all the coffee grinds has an even amount of water exposure to dissolve all the desired flavours from the coffee):

1. Distribute your coffee - once the desired coffee amount has been dosed in your basket, move your coffee around the portafilter by tapping your hands on the side of the portafilter, this will ensure an even distribution of coffee is in your basket before you tamp.
2. Tamp your coffee as level as possible - make sure the tamp is level so water will flow through the puck of tamped coffee evenly.
3. Consistent tamp strength - everyone will have a different tamping strength, try to keep it consistent every time. Adjust the grind size finer or coarser to counteract your tamp strength to reach your ideal extraction time.

Milk steaming tips:

• Start with milk below 7°C and introduce air (this is called stretch) until 37°C. This step ensures that the air introduced into the milk will turn into micro foam.
• Once the milk has reached 37°C, it’s important not to stretch the milk anymore, but still maintain a whirlpool and increase the milk temperature to 60-65°C. At this temperature the jug is usually too hot to hold for more than 3 seconds.
• The amount of foam you create from the steaming process is dependent on how much air you inject into the milk from the stretch phase. You can only create glossy microfoam milk by stretching your milk before the temperature of 37°C. Heating the milk over 70°C will allow for souring and scalding of the milk.
• The ideal amount of foam to create latte art is about a 20% stretch increase from the milk volume from the start of your steaming process.