Page 21 - CTI65eng-Emaga

heaven. From a glug of creamy milk in your
regular morning coffee to an airy foam on
top of your latte, it’s a romance that never
dies. But with our ever growing want for
dairy-free alternatives, do plant based
milks reach the standard? With a huge
variety of milk alternatives available – from
soya, oat and rice milk to nut milks– what
works when it comes to the latte art atop
our freshly pulled espresso shots? While a
milky swirl might seem like a flourish of
the hand, there’s actually quite a bit of
science behind it. Essentially, milk is a
suspension of fat, protein, and carbohy-
drates. That’s why it’s very good when we
add steam into it. It makes a very airy, very
creamy mix that holds it own and is perfect
for latte art. A higher fat content of milk
leads to a more stable foam. The air mole-
cules won’t expand too much and the ac-
cumulation of little bubbles makes for a
creamy, even foam. On the other hand, milk
alternatives are a little different. They don’t
have the fats, proteins, and carbohydrates
that milk does. They’re basically a suspen-
sion of ground nuts, soy, oats, etc, in water.
When you add them to coffee – a liquid
that is very acidic – it causes them to cur-
dle. But thanks to science today different
brands of plant-based milk were trickier
than nature and added extra fat into non-
dairy milks to make heart in your latte look
like a heart. Talking of perfect latte art, as
with everything, practice makes perfect,
with dairy milk or with non-dairy. So line
up your coffee shots, get your jug of foamed
milk and pour, pour, pour.
The trend for non-diary drinks has
just started and is not planning to stop
growing. As more and more people see not
only ethical but also health benefits of
switching to non-diary, companies come
up with creative ways of preparing all-time
favourite drinks with a new plant-based
twist. It is not surprising that the third
wave coffee movement has warmly greeted
these drinks. As both stand for high qual-
ity, this involves improvements at all stag-
es of production “from seed to cup”, here
we can say “from bean or nut to cup”.

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