- Hey guys, Ales from
European Coffee Trip and,
in this video, I will show
you how to make cappuccino
at home without using an espresso machine.
Here is the thing.
If you want to drink perfect
cappuccino or flat white,
pick a cafe from our website
and let the professional
barista make it for you.
That's what we do 99% of the time.
But sometimes, you want to experiment.
Rather than saying no to all milk options,
or building the espresso setup at home,
let's figure out what we can do instead
with the equipment we already have.
So, that's what this video is about.
(upbeat music)
This video is sponsored by Bodum.
The truth is that you can't brew espresso
without an espresso machine.
However, since we will
mix coffee with milk,
we don't need all the
properties of a real espresso
to achieve a good tasting
cappuccino at home.
(upbeat music)
Let's start with choosing
the right coffee.
As always, you want to use
a freshly roasted coffee
but, this time, you might look even to the
espresso roast category.
Because you will dilute coffee with milk,
you want to pick coffee with a higher body
that you can taste through the milk.
Today, we will use
Colombian coffee roasted by
Doubleshot in Prague.
It's from Finca Buenavista
owned by Carlos Imbachi.
It's a sweet coffee described like
plums, sugarcane, and lemongrass.
The next question is
how to brew espresso-strength coffee.
Think about coffee strength
as a percentage of coffee
in the total brew.
It's much higher for espresso,
somewhere between seven and 12 percent
to filter-style coffee,
that is typically between
1.2 and 1.8 percent.
In the espresso machine
you achieve higher strength
by applying high pressure
to extract coffee quickly
and by brew ratio that is typically
between one to two and one
to three coffee to water.
To achieve espresso strength
without an espresso machine,
we need to adjust brew ratio
and increase the extraction
by adjusting grain
size
adding agitation, increasing
the water temperature,
or extending the extraction time.
Eventually, all of it combined.
For this video, though, we
decided to use the brewing method
that most people have at home already.
And that's French press.
We get this one from Bodum
and it's from a legendary Chambord series.
Here is our recipe.
We use 30 grams of coffee.
We grind it fine.
That's about 16 clicks on Comandante.
(coffee grinding)
Add 100 milliliters of
98 degree Celsius water.
Stir it for 20 to 30 seconds.
And then let it steep until
four minutes, 30 seconds.
(timer ticking)
Then we put the plunger down,
and pour coffee into the cup.
We get 30 to 35 grams of coffee.
The next thing is milk.
Let's face it, there is more
milk in cappuccino than coffee.
We should be as careful in
choosing and preparing milk
as we are with coffee.
What we want is fresh, full-fat milk
that is delicious on its own.
We got one from a local
farm of the Niemetz family.
Now, we need to heat milk to a temperature
between 60 and 70 degrees Celsius.
For our cup, we use
150 milliliters of milk
that'll be heated in the microwave oven
for about 40 seconds.
If you go over 68 or 70,
(bell dings)
it negatively influences the taste,
it's more complicated
to create the microfoam,
and it's too hot to
drink it straight away.
The last step before mixing it with coffee
is frothing the milk.
We'll use Bodum Chambord
milk frother to do the magic
but you can use also use a
regular, small French press
or I even try shaker or
kitchen mixer to create
the desired structure of the milk.
The goal is to transfer part
of the milk to the microfoam.
It took us a while to
figure out the right way
to froth the milk and our
conclusion, our method,
was to actually start
with three to five presses
that go from top and that
introduce more air to milk
and stretch it a little
bit and then continue
with 15 to 20 presses where
you don't go over the top.
So you stay inside and, that way,
we have the really nice
milk for our cappuccino.
Now, it's time to put
both ingredients together.
You can pour directly
from Bodum milk frother
but, if you want more
control over pouring,
and even think of learning
or practicing latte art,
you should consider getting the pitcher.
I have to admit that I
really suck at latte art
and, since I wanted to
show you, in this video,
what is possible with simple tools
to what kind of cappuccino
and latte art you can do,
I invited our colleague, Jakub,
who is much better than me
and he will show us how to do it, right?
- Yeah, of course. Let's do it.
- Let's do it.
Perfect.
There are many latte
art tutorials on YouTube
that will help you to start.
We are not really experts but
the most important is to know
that pouring happens in two stages.
In the first stage, you pour more milk
and mix it carefully with coffee.
And in the second stage,
you pour more microfoam
into the cup and
eventually draw latte art.
Thank you guys for watching.
We hope that you enjoyed this video.
Let us know in the
comments if you like it,
if you learned something new,
and if you are interested
in trying or if you already try it.
And we would love to know
what was your experience.
Thank you, again, and I will see you
in the next video very, very soon.
Bye, bye.
