Barista Latte Art Training: Hearts, Tulips, and Swans (Easy for beginner-intermediate)

It's gonna be really fun. I was thinking, so I did a video a little bit ago talking about latte art, but all I showed you how to do was tulips, which are great. There's so many different variations of tulips, but there's a lot more, and a lot of people aren't necessarily to the level of tulips. So I was thinking we would walk through the different stages of latte art, and we're gonna do three pieces of latte art today, and I'm gonna try to do it really, really quickly, so you can watch this video really fast and use it for reference if you need. Okay, so the first thing we're gonna start with is hearts. Hearts are like the foundation of all latte art. Second of all, we're gonna do tulips, which I talked a little bit about, but I'm gonna do a little bit of a simpler version that you can then use to build upon with more complicated tulips. And then lastly, we're gonna do the granddaddy of all latte art, which is gonna be a swan. I am okay at them. I'm not an expert, but I'm gonna teach you how I know how to do them, and then potentially, if I remember, link in the descriptions to other videos of people doing even better swans. So let's get started. Okay, so the things you'll need today. So I'm using whole milk here. This is really, really nice, high-quality whole milk, but whatever you get from the store is probably pretty good, too. Just make sure it's whole, full-fat milk. I use two pitchers. I explained it in my past video, which I will link in the description why I use two, but I'm gonna use a smaller pitcher to steam in and then a bigger pitcher to transfer and then pour in. And also, we'll be using eight-ounce cups today, so I have this little eight-ounce bad boy right here. It's by Acme. They're very great, make really nice cups, so we'll use that, but honestly, you can use whatever size you want. Filling it up right under where the spout starts, right there, cool. Next, get your espresso. I'm gonna use a double shot of espresso, so we'll just get that going. Initially, make sure you're pulling in air into your cup. But then, after a couple seconds of that, dip your steam wand under and make sure you're getting that nice swirl there. Essentially, what that's doing is transferring that air through all of your milk, not just the top of it. Put your espresso in your cup. Then you have your milk, and I'm gonna transfer it into here. This is making sure that all the foam that might be sitting on top of your espresso, or, dang it, all the foam that's sitting on top of your steamed milk gets pushed through the rest of the milk. So, in theory, this should have the same texture all the way through. I'm gonna bounce it on the counter. Make sure we get out any last bubbles. And let's go. Tilt your cup. Pour in from a higher height, so you dunk all your milk underneath the espresso. Stop. Come in. Aim for the center of the cup. Hold your spout still. Rotate your cup up, and then lift up your spout as you draw through. And there you go. It's a little bit lower in the cup, but you have a really nice shape to it. It's super symmetrical, and that's a pretty good heart. So, we're gonna use those skills to move on and to work on our tulips. So, let's do that. All right, so we're gonna start with the exact same step that we did before. Tilt your cup. Pour from a height. But don't fill it up quite as much. We're gonna stop right about there. Now, aim for the center of the cup. Put in a dot, and stop. Aim again, push in, and stop. Aim, push in, stop. Then we'll create a nice little heart. So, we'll come up here, and just as we did before, lift up your pitcher and pull through. So, this is a four-stack tulip, which is pretty cool. It's a really nice four right here. So, what we were doing is, even though we placed this very first layer at the middle of the cup, essentially, with each layer that we then poured after it, we continued to push it down and wrap it around. So, the more you push in with your pitcher as you lay bases, the farther this is gonna wrap around. Ideally, in a really, really nice tulip pour, you'll have this wrapping all the way around and kind of tucking in with your dropper, but this looks pretty good. Nice little heart on top. Pretty well spaced out and balanced in the cup. But let's try it one more time. I'm gonna show you just how many stacks you can get in on one of these bad boys. But, to be clear, this is a great pour. If you can pour this in a cafe, you are good to go. But, let's see how many of these we can fit in. I'm probably not gonna talk while I pour this just because I don't wanna see till I just dip the water on the floor. Because my goal here is to just pour my best, which is really difficult to do while I talk. All right, again, not a perfect pour, but let's look at what's good and what's bad. As far as improvements go, I really, really like what this little layer did right here, where it's kind of wrapping around and going back into the layers. That's great, that's what I wish all of these were. However, that being said, this is pretty cool. This is one, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, this is 12 layers. So, that's a lot. So, for 12 layers in a stacked tulip, I think that's pretty good. But hopefully that all made sense. Let's do swans next, which we'll see how that goes. It has been a quick minute since I have poured swans. Now, I'm gonna pour a swan that is broken up into a couple different pieces. A lot of people can pour swans that are all one movement in terms of you start pouring and you don't lift up your pitcher until you're done with the pour. I prefer to break it up into a couple different movements just because it's a little bit easier for me. Okay, kind of nerve-wracking. I haven't done this in a while, so. I didn't even practice before this, so we'll just see where I'm at. Okay. So, fill up your base, as before. I like to do a little dot. And I set my base into that. And you come into this side, draw back, come down to the neck, full head, and out. Then you have the body right here. This is the wing, which we swiggle back on. And then you dip back down with your pitcher, so you bring your pitcher closer to pitch all of that in. You come back out on a little head. And honestly, I'm really pleased with that, if I'm being totally honest. It's been so long since I poured a swan. I'm pretty jazzed. Honestly, the best way to learn swans, I feel, is just watching people pour them. I had so many different people explain to me how to do swans, and it just took watching a bunch of videos of people pouring them to figure out how to do them. I don't know what else I want to say. I am constantly learning how to do latte art. I'm constantly learning how to brew. These were not my best examples, but I feel like they were good starter examples. It's sometimes hard. Going back to basics sometimes is super difficult. I can pour really, really crazy-looking tulips, but sometimes I go back and try to do a heart, and I'm like, I don't know how to do this. And that's totally cool. Latte art takes practice, it takes consistency, and even people who are really good at it sometimes flop on the most basic things. So I hope this was a little bit helpful, at least, or I hope you enjoyed our thick boy swan over here. And I'll see you next time. I post every Friday, so feel free to subscribe, feel free to follow. I post every day on TikTok at Morgan Dukes Coffee, Instagram Morgan Dukes Coffee. I'm on Twitter at tinylattegirl. I don't post on there very much, but I am there. And yeah, have a great day. I'll see you next time.