#Brum

Art of latte
Today we were lucky enough to meet Youri Vlaq of Absolute Coffee. It’s Youri’s job to teach the baristas at Urban Coffee Company how to pour the perfect latte – and, importantly, the skills of ‘latte art’. We managed to get him to show us how it’s done… by creating a teddy bear in a coffee cup!

Youri told us that the trick is to make sure that, when frothing up your milk, you make sure you create very small bubbles. This way, the milk will sit on top of the coffee.

Sadly, Youri also had the job of teaching me how to pour the perfect latte. Unfortunately, it was a little bit beyond my grasp – as this video proves, to my not inconsiderable embarrassment…

Even my fish looked a little sad!

Youri’s passionate about his coffee. He explained to us that it goes off within minutes of being ground – so, if you want the perfect cup, you should buy beans and grind them yourself. It also turns out that you don’t, under any circumstances, keep your coffee beans in the fridge. Just make sure they’re in a sealed container to keep the air out and keep them at room temperature. A really fresh coffee will have plenty of the light brown ‘crema’ on top.

Absolute coffee is totally hand picked – the blend Youri was using was coffee from four countries, Brazil Costa Rica, Honduras and India. Each coffee cherry contains two seeds (or bean) and it takes 25 cherries (50 beans) to make one cup. Youri explained that it’d take a single plant about a year to create enough coffee for one of the large bag of beans that Urban Coffee Company uses.

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