The flat white is a modern classic. With a rich taste and velvety mouthfeel, it’s the one to choose if you like coffee that’s not too sweet but brimming with espresso flavour!
Your silky smooth FW combines espresso and foamed milk in heavenly amounts. Recipes vary from café to café, but most look something like this:
Combining 1/3 espresso with 2/3 steamed milk, we could say the flat white is like a smaller, stronger latte. Flat whites and lattes both have the same amounts of espresso and milk, but the latte is crowned with more foam – think 1cm frothy top rather than the very thin microfoam finishing your flat white.
Flat white fans often like punchy, balanced coffees. Try our blue coffee! It’s rounded and chocolatey and just right for morning!
Their claim stems back to Moors Espresso Bar, a Sydney-based coffee shop, and the owner Alan Preston. Mr Preston opened his café in 1985 and intrigued customers with a new coffee addition. Sensing people were getting a little tired of frothy cups, he added the ‘White Coffee – flat’ to his coffee shop menu. This was apparently a take on the type of coffee drunk in his home state of Queensland. It featured an espresso base topped with thinly steamed milk and less foam. The first flat white? Could be…
Now for New Zealand
New Zealanders’ ears pricked up in 2015, when they heard Starbucks giving Australians credit for the flat white.
“False!” they cried. “WE are the bright sparks behind flat white coffee!”
According to them, a Wellington barista called Frank McInnes invented the flat white in 1989. He tried to make a cappuccino with low-fat milk, but it failed to froth like its whole milk cousin. The result? A flatter, cappuccino-style drink Barista Frank called ‘flat white’.
How to Make a Flat White
Flat White Recipe
Now you know where it comes from (well, kind of…), find out how to make a flat white coffee with our step-by-step guide!
Turn on espresso machine and purge
Fill portafilter with 18g fresh, finely ground coffee
Tamp to ensure the coffee is level in the basket
Add portafilter to the group head and make a double espresso straight into your cup
Pour milk into a stainless steel jug – it should come up to the base of the spout
Slide wand down the jug spout so the tip is just below the milk surface, then tilt the jug slightly to one side
Turn wand on to full power and bring the tip to the surface of the milk so the milk starts to spin in a whirlpool
Steam milk so it has around 1-2cm of foam on top. You are just folding the milk, not frothing it completely! You only want to hear that hissing, crackling sound for a 2-4 seconds.
Once finished, raise the jug slightly. When it feels too hot to touch for more than a second, turn wand off
Tap jug firmly on a work surface then swirl it around so the milk becomes glossy
Hold cup at an angle and pour a thin stream of milk over the espresso
When your cup is ⅔ full, bring the jug tip closer to the surface. The frothy part of the milk should now start to pour out and sit on top of the coffee. Pour until the cup is full
Enjoy your homemade flat white!
How to steam milk for a flat white
Generally, we steam milk for 5-10 seconds for espresso-based drinks. But did you know you can make it personal? That’s right! You can adapt the steam to create the right texture and froth amount for lattes, cappuccinos and – of course – flat whites! Check out how to steam milk below…
LATTE
Steam for around 8 seconds, or until volume increases by 20-30%. This will have about 10mm of foam sitting on top of the coffee once poured.
CAPPUCCINO
Steam for around 10 seconds, or until volume increases by 50-80%. This will have about 15mm of foam sitting on top of the coffee once poured.
FLAT WHITE
A smaller, thinner microfoam is needed here. The steamed milk should have a lighter texture with no large air bubbles and create only 5mm of foam on top of the coffee once poured. To get this, steam for around 2-4 seconds before doing the tapping-on-table bit. Awesome!
What is the best milk for froth?
There are so many milks in the Tesco fridge. Dairy, soya, pea, oat, coconut, gummy bear (just kidding)…
If you want to know how to make a flat white coffee barista-style, we’d recommend giving milk some serious attention. Because not all milks are great for froth. Take rice milk, for instance, its low fat content doesn’t make it a froth friend.
Cool with dairy? Always go for whole milk. Its high protein and fat contents will make your foam thick, creamy and full of body. Fresh milk is best too – it is easier to steam than milk close to its use-by date.
Prefer plant milk? Fancy a new froth flavour? Oat or soya are good shouts. We also love all the barista mylks on the market right now!
Meet the chimp behind this article!
Head Chimp founded Two Chimps alongside Laura in 2016 after being self-employed from the age of 21. He caught the coffee bug from using an at-home roaster, and the rest is history!
What Andy does outside of the treehouse:
When the weather’s nice, Andy loves going on bike rides with his trusty sidekick, microchimp Felix (who always leads the way, of course). Andy also enjoys spending time tending to the family’s vegetable garden, and looking after their at-home farmyard, which includes a cat, two guinea pigs, and six chickens!
Andy says…
“I believe every day is a school day, and I’m always looking for opportunities to stick my head in a book and absorb new knowledge. I also love a problem to solve and fix – there’s no such thing as problems, only solutions.”
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