Starbucks has introduced the flat white* and I’m in love. I have never liked coffee drinks except with loads of sugar and flavoring in them, but this flat white thing… holy cow it’s wonderful just straight up, no sweet anything.
Also if I got one every day I’d be spending about $1500 a year on coffee so no…
Is there some inexpensive, easy way I can make something like this at home? It appears that regular drip coffee just won’t cut it, that what I’m enjoying is the flavor of a “ristretto” espresso shot (combined with milk that is sort of more “velvety” in texture than what I usually find in lattes or cappucinos.) Well, can I make a ristretto espresso shot (or something that will simulate the flavor to the level of a coffee plebian like me) at home? Need I buy a machine of some kind? If so, how cheap can I be?
And the milk–any way to do that that doesn’t require several minutes of crafty maneuvers?
*By “introduce” I mean “introduce to mainstream US culture”. The drink itself is of either Australian or New Zealander origin.
If you insist on “cheap” then your best option to simulate the espresso shot is a Moka Pot. It won’t be quite as strong, but eh, it’s way closer than drip coffee.
The milk is steamed. I’m sure some clever clogs has thought up a cheap way to do that at home using an appliance you already have… though I can’t promise the results will be great.
As to a more expensive way: we drink homemade flat whites every morning–at least one apiece–so we don’t feel bad about investing in Saeco Superautomatics. Our first one lasted seven years. The new one has been going strong for 3.5. We buy models that retail around $600, and we figure that with 3-4 coffee drinks being made every morning, they pay for themselves pretty darn quick. They pull espresso and steam milk.
Thanks guys. Poking around here and elsewhere, I have come to discover that this would be much, much more trouble and money than it’s worth. Just going to have to budget out some money for a couple of flat whites a week at a coffee shop (okay, Starbucks) til I get tired of them.
so what’s the difference between a “flat white” (expresso & steamed milk) and a cappucino (expresso & steamed milk) and a latte (expresso & steamed milk, less frothy than cappucino) ?
It’s the nature of the shot, and the way the milk is prepared. The coffee is not as bitter (because it’s a “ristretto” shot) (and yet it seems to me to have a much deeper and full coffee flavor than I am used to from starbucks. Most starbucks coffee I find feels like a blast of surface level coffee chemical. I know it’s actual coffee, it’s just the way they do whatever they do makes me feel like I’m being attacked by a spray of coffee compound, followed by just an acidic sputter down the throat. I can’t explain it because I know nothing about coffee!)
And the milk is more silky. All in all I just find it a much more satisfying drink. It’s serious coffee, but it’s not assaulting me.
And yes I did do a taste test to make sure they weren’t just rebranding a latte.
ETA This is a serious problem. I am actually thinking about going and grabbing a flat white, basically all day. The thought occurs to me at every pause in activity. I have never had this reaction to a Starbucks product before.
I was always a little confused about a flat white and thought it was something rather exotic and tricky, thing is though, it is actually exactly the coffee that I’ve been making for myself every morning for yonks.
I use a classic gaggia. Espresso ground Cafe Direct coffee. Make a double shot, steam the (whole) milk to smooth foamy texture and add it to the coffee in 2:1 or 3:1 ratio. The milk doesn’t want be too hot and the ratio of coffee to milk means you have a strong coffee diluted with milk rather than a coffee-flavoured milk drink.
You don’t end up with a massive cup of coffee, it ends up being just the right size so that you finish it before you are sick of it and it still remains the right temperature.
In other words, the characteristics of a flat white appear to be exactly those that hit my personal preference sweet spot. I’ve hit upon them by trial and error whereas I could have saved myself a lot of (happy) experimentation by just asking an antipodean.
Starbucks is infamous for coffee so bad you can’t drink it without a scoop of ice cream mixed in. If you start with strong, black, dark-roast, bitter coffee (“burnt” is a common description of their standard coffees), you pretty much have to sugar, cream and flavor the bejeezus out of it to make it palatable. The coffee becomes the flavoring.
Have you ever tried, say, a good medium-roast African or Indonesian coffee with a heavy shot of half-and-half? I’d bet dunkin to donuts it’s a hell of a lot like your “flat white.”
I may have just made a face at my computer because of this thread. I’m in the same stupid situation, only I was doing better. No stopping at starbucks between the bus and the train in the morning. No taking myself out midafternoon for a flat white.
Now, though, I’m thinking about one again. And planning for how I can work one into my day tomorrow (today it’s 1) too cold out and 2) too late in the day for me to have caffeine)).
From what I can tell, a flat white is just a cappucino with the foam actually integrated into the drink rather than sitting on top.
There’s a lot of enthusiast and marketing mumbo-jumbo about microfoam and the like, but what it boils down to is that the foam is more integrated, instead of being nearly meringue-like on top of the cappucino.
No thank you. I love a flat white, and I hate cream in coffee, it’s nothing like the microfoam of steamed milk.
I must admit, the Starbucks flat white is OK. I tasted it right alongside a double shot tall latte, no foam, which was my previous order, and much preferred the flat white.
I’m not a barista, and I can’t 100% confirm how Starbucks do it compared to their ‘normal’ coffee in the States. But here in Australia the difference between a flat white, a latte, and a cappucino is primarily the treatment of the milk/foam. I’ve got an espresso machine at home that I make coffee for the missus on (I personally can’t drink coffee.)
When you froth the milk with the steam probe, it behaves quite differently depending upon how deep into the milk you have the end of the probe. For a cappucino you want it shallow to create a lot of hard foamy froth composed of lots of big bubbles. For the flat white and latte you want little froth, composed of small bubbles. To me as a rank amateur, making them at home there is not a lot of discernible difference between a latte and a flat white, but the flat white is mainly warmed milk with some small froth on top, while the latte I increase the ratio of foam to milk. An actual barista would probably shake their head at me about now, but that’s the way I do it at home.
Okay. Given that it’s new and just absolutely completely totally different from every other variation of coffee with milk, I wouldn’t be too surprised to find it has secret ingredients with polysyllabic names.
For what it’s worth, I too have never been an unsweetened coffee person, but found the inherent sweetness in Starbucks’ flat white to be just as advertised and make for a delightful drink without any sugar added. Maybe its good that my stomach can’t handle much coffee right now, or I’d be in exactly the same financial conundrum!
Here’s a chart showing the proportions of coffee, milk and foam etc for different mixes. You can do it with a simple Gaggia Classic or similar, but it definitely needs to be an espresso machine, both for the strength of the coffee and the foam. Basically a flat white is like a latte but without foam and with less milk.
