Recently, over the last couple of years, as I have traveled, I have wound up taking more active vacations. By "active", I don’t mean physical activity, but rather learning experiences that involve creation rather than consumption.
Why? In short, I like learning and novelty. It forms a stronger memory than pictures of sights or consuming of food and drink.
For example, when in Bali, I took a 4 hour Indonesian cooking class. It turned out that everyone there were tourists too, but it wasn't a usual tourist experience. The tourist needed to do some work too: chopping, mashing curry in mortar and pestle, tending to skewers over an open flame. Mashing curry by hand is tiring by the way. When I visited a friend in Germany a few years ago, I could have taken a language immersion class for 6 hours a day. But, that was too much for me. So my sweet spot of learning activity lies somewhere between a few hours and a few hours a day.
This time, when visiting Australia for the first time, I took 5 hours of barista training in Sydney. The result was a certificate which is a good first step to getting a job as a barista in Australia. I have no plans to do that there or elsewhere which made the approach all the more interesting to me.
The main purpose of taking the class was to take the 2 hour coffee art follow-on class. The first 3 hour class went through what you need to know to run a cafe to Australian health code. Food handling safety of milk, equipment maintenance, and proper drink preparation. The proper amount of surface foam for various types of milk based drinks from macchiatos and flat whites to lattes and mochas. Hands on practice with dosing, tamping, pulling shots and steaming milk to the right temperature -- all at same time.
The highlight and insight for me was during the coffee art class. Cut to the conclusion: poured milk art is hard. What you see in the Instagram captures are the result of careful frothing of milk and a practiced hand.
We learned three types of coffee art. The manipulation of thick chocolate syrup (fudge) resting on top of milk foam. The use of crema dragged into white milk foam, or white milk foam dragged through crema, known as "etching". The free pouring of foamed milk. In order of difficulty, fudge is the easiest and free pouring is the most difficult.
I was able to do a passable job at fudge art using the templates provided. I was able to do a barely passable job at milk etching, again using the templates provided. When pouring milk foam, I didn't produce anything passable as more than a smudged, blurry leaf. Our instructor "PK" said it probably takes 20 days of practice, and to practice on “to go” or “takeaway” cups since you can just slap the lid on them if they look ugly. She said that some students took the class for 10 days in a row to practice.
I personally went through about 1 gallon of milk steamed for practicing making the various drinks (flat white, latte, mocha, cappuccino, piccolo latte) and the milk art class. There were 15 or so other students in the class going through about the same amount of milk. With all the 5 gallon buckets filled with a brown hot mess of steamed milk and espresso, I can hear the cows crying at all the wasted milk. I hope it all got recycled somehow. All in the name of art and enjoyment.
The next time you see a beautiful rosetta, leaf, swan, or other foam creation on the surface of your drink, remember that many factors came together just right: right foaminess of milk, a steady hand and much practice.