So what's this about? You'll have to head to Gather Round the Mic to find out!

Any readers I have left have probably noticed my lack of posting. In the past, I’ve used this space for a few things: Political rants, introspection, and most recently as a journal of my quest to make artful lattes. But I’m a busy guy — two kids, three or four jobs at any given time, and football season is about to start — so I often hit a wall when trying to think of or compose a coherent, moderately interesting blog entry.

Anywho, in an attempt to reawaken my writing mind, I’ve joined the cast of Gather Round the Mic, a collective of thoughtful bloggers who write on music, film, food, comedy and other such things. No, my posts probably won’t fit into any of those neat categories, but post I shall! In fact, my first post is up already… and in the interest of getting GRTM more web traffic, I suggest you head on over there and read it.

Any lingering political opinions will probably find their way here, as will further lattes and posts that might be too offensive for any of the other GRTM crew to be unwittingly associated with. And, on occasion, I may “crosspost,” and when I do, you’ll have to click over to the GRTM side to comment.

But seriously, GRTM has some great stuff on it. Go check it out right now!

As with most of my habits — the good ones, anyway — I’ve gotten out of sync and basically stopped updating you on my progression as a barista. Suffice it to say that this will be the end of regular updates on the topic; I’ve still got plenty to learn and plenty of practice ahead of me… years, maybe a lifetime. But I’ll leave you with the best stuff I’ve poured between my last post and this one.

The smart course would’ve been this: Stick to rosettas until I’ve truly perfected them, then go back to hearts — which, by all accounts, are far easier than rosettas — and perfect those.

Alas, the tulip has pulled me into its deceptively simple blooms.

Here’s a good example of a great tulip pour (courtesy Louisville’s fine Quills Coffee):

The tulip presents a major challenge because it isn’t poured like the others. With hearts and rosettas, it’s all about gentle, graceful motions: Letting the foam slide out of the pitcher, swaying it from side to side with smooth motions, then tying it all together with a slow, fine-line ending pour. In contrast, the tulip takes techniques from both heart and rosetta and blends them, but forces the pourer to do everything with FORCE. The simplest explanation is that the tulip is made up of heart atop heart atop heart, each new one pushing the one below further “down” (toward one rim edge) of the cup and thus creating the circular shapes you see at the bottom. In practice, this “forcing” requires aggressive shoves of foam, yet mixed with the same accuracy and graceful hand motions associated with the others. It’s not hard to make a bad tulip, but it’s very difficult to make a good one.

Not sure I’ve made a good one yet. But here are a few I made in the past couple days, which are at least tulip-esque. (Scroll over for caption, click for bigger view.)

APPENDIX: That last one is a novelty pour called the Hanging Heart, which isn’t as common as the rosetta, heart or tulip. I haven’t messed much with it, but I got close enough once that I figured it’s worth sharing.

Successes and failures aren’t coming chronologically now, but rather depend on a variety of factors (mood, milk, level of business). Anyway, here’s my best work of the last week or so. (Roll over for title; click for enlarged version.)

At the last second, I decided to make this a heart instead of a rosetta. It sort of came out neither… which just goes to show you that planning ahead is a virtue in latte art.

This was a conscious decision, to try for a curved rosetta. Came out alright, if a bit uneven.

Getting closer to the rounder wings on the sides. This one has a good bit of definition for having used 2% milk.*

I think I lingered too long on this one in the beginning, making the “base” of the thing sort of fat. I’m also starting to notice that the right side of my rosettas consistently looks better than the left. Strange.

*It seems that 2% milk is the most volatile. Whole milk is perfect for latte art — and, supposedly, for the taste of the latte, which is why most coffeehouses use it by default — but at Spencer’s, we’ve always used 2% as the base and never even stocked whole milk. I inherited the business this way, and never saw a need to change it; I don’t often drink lattes, and until recently haven’t pursued the latte art. Come fall, we’ll probably make the transition to whole milk, but leaving 2% as an option for stubborn regulars.

When I was a skateboarder, I could never manage to pull off a flip trick. You have to kick your feet a certain way, to get the board to spin upside-down, and then land back on top of it, and it on the ground, and keep rolling. I never managed to get my brain to convince my body of what it needed to do, although my brain entirely understood “how” to do it.

Latte art, for me, is like this. My brain processes the pours I’ve already done, and I make the necessary adjustments in my head. But getting those adjustments to work themselves out in my muscles is something else entirely. As soon as I manage to fix one part of my method, another part goes awry, and getting the total package is just tough.

I’ve particularly been struggling to get the big, round, “border leaves” on my rosettas, which are otherwise looking pretty good. Today I realized what I’d been doing wrong, and worked to make the adjustments. What I ended up with are some majorly rounded rosettas, which lack a little of the definition of my previous ones. But I’m still excited about them, because my hands are getting the hang of the motion needed to get that rounding effect. Now, I just have to make it all come together. At this rate, I’m hoping it won’t be too long.

Starting to get the rounding effect here. I like the “yin and yang” effect, and hope I can figure out how to reproduce it someday.

Nice definition in this one, and pretty nice rounding on the right side. Of course, it’s pretty unbalanced and quite “sharp,” but still kinda cool.

I was going for round, and I got it here. I think this is really neat, although the definition is a little lacking. That I managed to fill the whole cup with some sort of “art” is quite a leap from where I’ve been previously.

I’m going to break my habit of posting a few attempts, and just show you the grand prize of Justin’s rosettas to this point. It was made with whole milk, and was the very first one I poured today. It wouldn’t win a latte art contest in a major city, but compared to where I was just a few weeks ago, it’s something I’m pretty darn proud of.

Thin lines! Defined leaves! Symmetrical and centered in the cup! It’s still missing the “wings” that you’ve seen in the pro examples I’ve posted, but I think I’ve figured out why… in any event, I didn’t dump this one down the drain. I drank it, slowly, and savored both the flavor and the experience.

Not a good day for latte art. Not sure why… I didn’t even attempt any tulips or hearts, because the rosetta quality took a step down today.

Where’d the foam go? I don’t know!

This guy came out really wobbly.

This one was today’s best. Notice the soft, thick, white border rings near the edges of the cup. All my rosettas have been missing this, and most of my attempts today were to get this to happen. Which might explain why they mostly failed. Also, note my strange, recurrent tendency to veer southwest at the bottom. What’s with that? As a reminder, something like this is what I’m going for:

This is a picture-perfect rosetta, poured by Chris Alameda at Espresso Vivace in Seattle. The owner, David Schomer, is the world's foremost teacher of latte pours.

First one after a brief vacation to the lake. Thin but definitely presentable… but what’s with that weird curve to the left?

This is the Fiery Wonder. (It’s made with whole milk, as opposed to the 2% we routinely serve. Not sure if that makes a big difference or not… more after further testing.)

Ran out of “drawing milk” on the drawthrough for the stem. That not only makes the stem look weird, but affects the milk flow and keeps the inner parts of the leaves from being sucked under into a nice, flowing motion. The foam was great though.

Another try — and another fail — for a tulip.

Today, I aimed for one rosetta, one heart, on tulip. The rosetta came easily enough (imperfect though it was); the heart a sort of happy, minimalist accident; the tulips not even close.

We’ll start with the good stuff, and work our way down.

I quite liked this rosetta, the only one I poured for photo all day. Foam a little spotty, and the espresso pulled too fast, making the whole thing a little light in color. But it’s got a good aura.

This is a little heart. It is great. I’m not sure how I managed it, since none of my other heart attempts today came anywhere near mediocrity.*

This one made me giggle like a schoolgirl. I was attempting a tulip — the mechanics of which are to pour a heart, then another on top, then another, and ties them through with a stem. But what I got was a heart/bird (see the obvious beak on the right?) with a rosetta-ish bloom out the top. Happy accident, indeed!

In the spirit of transparency, here are three god-awful tulip attempts. No explanation given, because none exists — except that I don’t know how to pour tulips.

*I suppose I should explain the mechanics of the heart pour. Briefly, it’s like the beginning of the rosetta — pour silky foam in the middle, wiggle a bit for stripy contrast — but instead of wiggling back late to form more little blooms, you simply pour through while raising the milk up to thin out the line. Most people learn the heart first, then the rosetta; most of my employees can pour good-looking hearts consistently, while I’ve only poured a couple mediocre ones in my latte-art existence.