What is a latte?

Everything you need to know about the world’s most popular coffee

TL;DR The latte is a regular-sized coffee, consisting of a double shot of espresso mixed with hot steamed milk with a little foam on top. It’s a very milk-heavy drink, but perfect for those who want a well-balanced, smooth coffee.

What is it?

The cafe latte, or more commonly in the UK, the latte, is one of our team’s favorite drinks at Hips Coffee. It combines the perfect amount of espresso and milk to create a silky-smooth beverage, with just enough foam to make every sip an absolute joy. A relatively modern drink, making a latte starts exactly the same way as with the mocha and the cappuccino, with a double shot of espresso pulled directly into a coffee cup. 

After that, freshly steamed milk with just a touch of foam is slowly and carefully poured straight into the cup to mix the two ingredients together, until eventually you’re left with a pristine milky coffee, complete with a smattering of latte art to boot.

It’s one of our most requested drinks here in the Forest of Dean, and one that’s known the world over for being sweet yet complex without entirely overpowering that brilliant espresso taste at its core. It’s also one of the most versatile drinks out there and pairs well with syrups, particularly vanilla, hazelnut and caramel.

The coffee

All good coffee starts with good espresso. Whether it’s a latte, a mocha, a cappuccino, a flat white, or any other of our caffeinated beverages, all of it really stems from that key ingredient first and foremost. At Hips, we have a specially crafted, bespoke blend of Ethiopian and Brazilian coffee, roasted to a medium profile by our friends over at Studio Coffee Roasters in Hereford.

As it’s a medium roast, it ensures this special mix of beans retains a lot of the characteristics of its origin countries and coffee bean varieties without losing the characterful bitterness that otherwise occurs from a darker roast. 

Typically, the longer you roast coffee, the darker it becomes and the more bitter and brittle it becomes in the process. This is great if you like a bitter, strong coffee, but the more you roast it, the less fruity and subtle taste characteristics you’ll find in the brew. Larger coffee chains often use dark roast beans for their espresso, as it's a more consistent flavor. But it truly does remove a lot of unique elements that you'd otherwise find. From fruitiness to sugary sweetness to wild and wonderful kicks that otherwise hang around in a medium roast. All of our drinks use 18g of ground coffee per double shot of espresso. 

Recipes differ, but we use 18g of freshly ground coffee at a 1:2 ratio (Image Credit: Hips Social)

Once properly added to a group handle, distributed, and tamped, our espresso bar then pushes water through the coffee puck at 92°C with nine bars of pressure to release all of that flavor and espresso goodness. On average, we’re looking to extract around 36 g of espresso per shot in around 30 seconds or so. This gives us a really clean and refined espresso shot that’s neither too bitter nor too sharp on the tongue and is the perfect base for us to add milk to.

Alternatively, if you’d like to keep your caffeine levels down, we also have a decaf option in the form of a Colombian bean, similarly roasted by our friends over at Studio.

The Milk

Like all of our drinks, you can, of course, request to have your latte made with any number of the milks we have on offer. At Hips, we typically have skimmed, oat, and coconut milk available as standard, but unless otherwise requested, we will typically use whole milk. We use whole as the mixture of fats and protein in it blends incredibly well together and creates a perfectly smooth, creamy milk that not only compliments the espresso but also allows our baristas to create intricate latte art as they pour.

Unlike the cappuccino, the milk incorporated into a latte is a lot thinner, or "wetter," by comparison. What we mean by this is that less air is added to the milk during the steaming process, and you get less foam as a result. You can, of course, ask for a wet latte (no foam) or a dry latte (more foam but still less than a cappuccino). 

Unlike the cappuccino, as the latte has more milk and less foam mixing with the beverage, the taste of the espresso will be far more diluted than its cappuccino counterpart. This will remove some of the bitter taste you’d otherwise see in your coffee.

Custom Lattes

The standard latte isn’t for everyone, and there’s a multitude of ways you can tweak your latte to get it just right for you. In the Forest of Dean, it’s quite common to request an extra hot latte. For us, that involves preheating the cup and steaming the milk to a hotter temperature than you’d otherwise get in a regular drink (although this does break down the creaminess of the milk in the process altering the taste).

A good latte (left) should have considerably less foam than a cappuccino (Image Credit: Hips Social)

Alternatively, if your coffee is too strong, you could instead opt for a single shot of espresso. We can of course also switch to our guest espresso or use decaf instead, and we have all manner of syrups that can be added before the espresso is pulled into the cup. We have a wide variety of syrups available depending on the time of year, including vanilla, caramel, hazelnut, and others (always worth checking with your barista).

The Origins of the Latte

We know for certain that people have been drinking coffee with milk since the early 1500s. It’s been around in a number of forms; however, the cafe latte, as a cafe menu item, only really began to appear in circulation in the 1980s, originally appearing in the US before spreading into Europe and further afield. 

The term itself first appeared in the Oxford English Dictionary in 1867 but was typically seen as a term for the drink being created at home rather than in a traditional coffee shop. 

If you’re ever in Italy, bear in mind that “latte” on its own translates as "milk," so unless you want a glass of cold milk, you must ask for a “Caffe Latte.”