Today I’m going to show you how to make cappuccino and latte art at home without an espresso machine. After the instructions on how to make latte art at home, I’m going to show you 10 great tips that you can use when making coffee at home.
What you’re going to need in order to make the espresso, is either a moka pot or a French press. Both of these things cost around $20 for the good ones. They are super compact, easy to store and they’ll make sufficient espresso for you cappuccino needs.
Always start out with fresh coffee beans and grind them at home if you can. Prepare your French press as you usually would, just adding a little bit more coffee. When you’re done brewing your coffee, warm up the milk in the microwave and pour it into the French press.
Pump The Milk
Carefully pump the milk to incorporate oxygen and make it nice and foamy. Just be careful not to pump too often because it will make the milk to become too thick. Transfer your foamed milk into a milk can and swirl it around whilst knocking out small bubbles from the can until you can get a nice silky texture.
Pour The Milk Into Your Coffee
Start pouring your milk into your coffee until your cup or glass is around 2/3 full. Then stop and slowly layer your latte art onto the crema. This part takes a lot of practice, but after a few times, you’ll get the hang of it.
Pro Tip
Use controlled movements and lift the jug to thin the stream
9 Great Tips For Making Coffee At Home
We’ll go through a few tips that are extremely helpful when making coffee at home on a budget. You want to get the most out of your gear and the most out of your coffee beat. We’re also going to touch base on what coffee beans you should be buying and what coffee beans you should be staying away from.
Buy fresh coffee beans
The number one tip I can give anybody that wants to drink better coffee at home is to buy fresh coffee beans. Don’t get the store brand or just any coffee beans of the shelves in your local store. Go to your specialty coffee shop around the corner or order coffee beans online. Just make sure that you get fresh coffee beans from a third wave specialty roaster.
Grind the coffee beans yourself
Tip number two is to grind the coffee beans yourself at home. Ideally, you grind your coffee beans seconds before you actually start brewing your coffee. If you don’t have a grinder at home, one of the things that you can do is to go to your local store that has these big coffee grinders in the shop. Just pour your coffee beans in there and grind them to the coarseness that you require for brewing at home.
Pro Tip
Use your blender to grind the beans If you can’t grind your coffee beans in the store or there’s no store close by with a grinder, you can use your blender at home. Obviously, this isn’t going to work for espresso, but it will work for drip coffee brewing methods like a normal drift machine, a French press or a pour-over
At this point, some coffee nerds are freaking out, but this is an emergency solution. Let’s say that you’re in a Bed & Breakfast that doesn’t have a coffee grinder, this is always a solution that you can take as an emergency thing, but you shouldn’t be in an “emergency situation”. If you want to buy a good coffee grinder that I personally use, I recommend either the JavaPresse Manual Coffee Grinder or an electric one called, Baratza Encore Coffee Grinder. You can check the prices over at Amazon by following the links. The electric one is easier to use and a little pricier, but both will do the job just fine!
Use high-quality water
I cannot stress enough how important high-quality water is to make a good cup of coffee. In certain areas of the world, tap water will be fine. You would have to check the water in your area, meaning how many solubles are in the water and what is the water hardness. I personally use Poland Spring Water that is recommended by La Marzocco. If you’re looking for a way to filter your water at home, I can highly recommend the water filter pitcher from Brita.
Use the right water temperature
A further important point is water temperature. A lot of people that make all over or drip coffee will boil their water and pour it straight over. You should use a water temperature of anywhere between 90 and 92 degrees Celsius or anywhere between 190 and 197 Fahrenheit.
Weigh your coffee beans and water
When it comes to making coffee at home, you should always weigh your coffee beans and water. There are different types of scales that you can use. The ones that are a little bit pricier, but have more features and the basic scales that will also do the job just fine. When it comes to proportions it all depends on what coffee beans you are using and what kind of coffee beverage that you’re making. If we’re talking about filter or drip coffee, it will be one part coffee and ten parts water. I prefer to use my cheap weigh from Coastline which cost around $20. You can find one on amazon here.
Use high-quality milk for the best result
Use high-quality whole milk if you want to have some delicious coffee, or you want to have a delicious cappuccino, you have to use high-quality milk.
Use a French press to stream the milk
If you want to make a cappuccino at home and you don’t have a steamer to firm your milk, you can use a French press to do it. It’s very simple! You can heat up milk in the microwave and pour it into your French press.
Making cold brewed coffee
Cold brewed coffee is very trendy at the moment, but what many people don’t know is that you can actually make it at home very easily. All you have to do is to take a pot with cold water, put your coffee grinds in the coarsely ground coffee and then just leave it sitting in the pot for about 12 hours. After that, you just built it through paper filters or whatever filter that you have and you’ve made yourself a cold Roux at home.
Pro Tip
If you want to make some nitro cold brew, you can use a whipping siphon. You just put in your water, put in your coffee ground, but two capsules into whipping cyclone and then put it in the fridge for two hours. Cultural pole crew has a very long shelf life, so you can actually make it like two or three days in advance
Reuse the coffee grounds
Now that you’ve brewed yourself some drop coffee or you’ve made yourself an espresso, you usually throw the coffee grounds. There are quite a few things that you can do with it. One of my favorite things to do with coffee grounds is to mix it with coconut oil and use it as a scrub in the shower. Another thing you do with it is to remove odors from the drain of your sink. Put it into the sink and flush it down with a lot of water and it will actually remove any odor or residue within the pipe.
