Latte Art Awesomeness

After my previous blog on latte art I went on the search for some fantastic latte art. The first website I came upon was Rate My Rosetta. While not world champion material, they do show some awesome rosettas, tulips and hearts.

Though what I really wanted to see was how the world’s best do it. Chris Loukakis, the 2011 World Latte Art Champion, has some amazing videos on Youtube showing how he does what he does best.

Looks easy doesn’t it? Wrong! This stuff is extremely difficult and the World Latte Art Championships is one of the main reasons latte art has taken off and latte artists have progressed into doing some crazy patterns.   

Let’s just look at how far latte art has progressed in 4 years. Jack Hanna, the 2007 world champion, was doing some truly cool patterns at the time; rosettas, fire breathing pac-man, tulips, hearts and mixes of the basic patterns in regular cups all quickly and at a world standard level. But comparatively to Chris’s video before we already see a vast difference.

So what are judges in the championships now looking for? Each competitor must do a latte, macchiato and designer pattern which are marked (with multiplier weighting) as follows by the visual judges:

Two patterns and presented picture identical (0 if no picture presented) (0-6 pts) x 2

Contrast between ingredients (0-6 pts)

Harmony, size and position among patterns within cups (0-6 pts)

Successfully achieved level of difficulty (0-6pts) x 2

Visual Foam Quality (0-6pts) x 2

Overall appealing look (0-6pts) x 4

On top of this, baristas need to have technical excellence to substantiate their latte art skills, which constitutes one third of their final mark!

I could watch these latte artists for hours on end still in awe, but let me show you one last picture.

This was done by the 2011 and 2012 Queensland Latte Art Champion – a 13 part tulip. A Queensland competitor, who consequently went on to be 3^rd in Australia in 2011, is already pulling out patterns which the 2007 world latte artist at the time could not produce, let alone with the contrast, symmetry and positioning in the cup. The world of latte art is surely looks bright, especially for the Australian baristas!