Latte Art in Antigua, Guatemala … don’t mind if I try!

I’ve gotten into the coffee tasting business rather late in life. I’ll never really be a coffee aficionado since my first love now is Single Malt Scotch. That being said … I do like when we have guests over and I can offer them an excellent cup of coffee that they’ll ask about. If you’re in Antigua, Guatemala, you’ll have an opportunity to have some excellent coffee. In Guatemala, it’s one of the most priced commodities and some of the best coffee plantations around are just a few minutes outside of Antigua.

There is the Finca Filadelfia coffee plantation, where you’ll have the opportunity to do a coffee plantation tour, which is highly informative and give you some good background into the plant and the trade. It’s interesting but as an experience … I rate it as a “MEH”. However, if you’re lucky to meet up with Josue Esquivel at the plantation, I would highly suggest having a chat with him and doing the latte art course that they offer at the plantation. You’ll end up going through the general aspects of espresso machines and the mill, the grain and espresso preparation, as well as the different varieties of drinks, the properties and types of milk, etc. You will have yourself  the opportunity to prepare your drinks and designs, led by the barista / guide.

Here are three great reasons to do the class here

1. You’ll never have to worry about wasting coffee beans
2. There will be tons of workers to drink all the great lattes with horrible art that you will make
3. There is no pressure to actually be good at this stuff, which will make you much better quickly

For both D* and myself, we had a blast and both Josue and his expert barista, were ridiculously patient and answered a lot of technical questions about coffee, espresso, crema and dealt with my chemical questions very easily. They know their stuff here, that’s for damn sure!

We ended up taking 15 videos throughout the 2 1/2 hours they spent with us. We’ve tried many times to learn from other YouTube videos, but we were never able to do it properly. Here is one of the longer videos, to help you get a flavour for what you’re going to do in the class.

Another great thing about spending time with these guys, is that there were no other people with us. It was a great private session with Josue and company 😀

By the end of the class, we were able to figure out the proper way to make foam, use the chocolate/moka bottle for designs, as well as use the toothpicks to come up with decent designs.

Here is another video of how to make a star in the course

After everything, we weren’t experts but we did have tons of fun creating our designs!