Creating Championship Winning Latte Art | 6 Tips from UK Latte Art Champion Ben Lewis

Guest post by Ben Lewis, UK Latte Art Champion  ·  Updated 27 September 2026  ·  8 min read

We're thrilled to welcome our good friend Ben Lewis, UK Latte Art Champion, to the Harmony blog. He's an exceptionally experienced barista, and when I floated the idea of a blog on latte art, there were very few people more qualified to write it than the UK Champion himself! Over to Ben – you can find more of his work at Blue Hour Coffee.

UK Latte Art Champion: Ben Lewis

When all the fundamental practices of making good coffee are in place, latte art is simply motion and repetition – but skipping to the end is ever so enticing. Let's talk about how we put ourselves in the best position to make those drinks look silky, presentable and delicious.

I'm going to share a large chunk of my latte art knowledge to help you get to the stage where we are simply practising making patterns. Then, later on, I'll give you a few tips on how to jump to the next level up (swans, roses, sea creatures and more!).

My 6 Best Latte Art Tips

1. Start With a Well-Extracted Espresso

I can pour latte art into pretty much any liquid. That's not a brag, that's just a fact. Unfortunately, that involves 10 years of practice and an intrinsic knowledge that I really don't believe has any transferable use to any other aspect of life.

However, the easiest way to make sure that we are positioning ourselves correctly for latte art success is to extract a good, fresh espresso, usually a blend and something medium to medium-dark roast.

It's extremely difficult to pour cleanly into a poorly extracted espresso, because you will largely be pouring milk into a pool of brown water, which is usually very hot and dissipates quite quickly when milk gets added.

To help with our latte art capability, the coffee needs to be appropriately extracted into the water, which will in turn create a thicker liquid (espresso) and subsequently a crema on top, which will make our pours stand out much more. That crema also gives the espresso a rigidity which we can use to stabilise the latte art we attempt on top – so it will not only look better, it will be more controlled. It will also taste WAY better.

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2. Don't Burn the Milk: Steam to 55–65°C

If I had a penny for every time I cut off somebody steaming milk because it was burnt, I wouldn't need to write this blog to make money – I'd be speeding around the coast on a jetski.

Milk reaches a peak sweetness between 55 and 65°C, depending largely on the fat content. However, if you like it a little warmer than that, I don't blame you – that's largely what our English coffee culture is built on... it's cold all the time, we need our drinks to stay hot.

But, for starters, burning the milk is not just ruining the flavour, it's destroying your chances of getting decent latte art. Whilst it's possible to get a blobby heart out of thick, bubbly, extra-hot milk, latte art perfection comes from aiming for that 55–65°C range, which will greatly improve the taste and texture of your milk foam.

We go even colder when we are aiming to achieve the extremely complex latte art level – but more on that later.

Harmony note: for more on milk temperature, see our guide to what temperature a flat white should be.

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3. The Two Pillars of Latte Art: Contrast and Symmetry

Contrast

Now we've got decent milk and a well-extracted espresso, it's time to smush them together. "But Benji, how is it possible to create nice latte art like yours? It's so crisp and clean and it always pops in the cup!" Thank you, reader, I appreciate your kind words.

Making latte art look sharp is largely down to contrast: the consistent colour of the brown coffee and the clean-cut lines of the milk foam on top. Having a clear-cut definition between these two makes any latte art pop. Even if we pour out a blob, if it's got great definition it looks much more appealing.

We achieve this by, first of all, controlling the mixing of the milk and the espresso at the start of the pour. We begin higher up, aiming a consistent flow of milk into the centre of the espresso, then we move the jug to combine the flowing milk stream and the espresso. The best mixing here will create a single, clean brown colour on top, which we will use as our canvas.

For excellent contrast, we need to get the nib of the jug as close to the coffee as possible. We do this by tilting the cup towards the jug to begin the pour, allowing the nib to get close to the surface to pour out the foam. Don't forget to tilt the cup back as you commit to pouring your shapes! Or you'll end up with milky shoes...

Symmetry

Now we've established how to sharpen up the pouring, we need to focus on making it symmetrical. Aesthetically, this is more pleasing to the eye – whether it's a heart, a tulip or any symmetrical pattern, we need to manipulate the pour to make sure it looks that way.

When we have created our blob for the heart, for example, continue the flow of milk but lift the jug higher to reduce the foam being added, until you can see the flow of milk at the top of the blob. From here, we need to cut through the blob right down the centre to create that symmetrical look. Even if the blob is off-centre or the tulip layers are not perfect, cutting through the pattern in the centre will make our design look much more intentional and eye-catching.

It's also important to aim our pouring at the centre of the cup – doing our best to keep the pattern equidistant from the edges will make for a more well-formed pour.

Okay, let's talk about levelling up...

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4. Learn Patterns in the Right Order (Then Pour Your Swan)

Most people have the internet. If you're reading this right now, you're probably using it (unless this text becomes so vitally important that a book publisher comes knocking...). Regardless, if you are looking to improve your latte art, you can see the entire skill on social media via thousands of videos a day.

Whilst this is good for building your excitement about learning the skill, it can lead you down the wrong path when it comes to progression. The learning path does not go: heart → tulip → unicorn. Instead, it SHOULD go: heart → tulip → rosetta → slowsetta → swan, and so on.

"But Benji, that's not fun, I want to serve my customers seahorse lattes!" I'm well aware – and so do I. But how often do they ask you "what is that supposed to be?", or indeed say nothing at all because it's not eye-catching enough?

The key is that the fundamental skills of intermediate latte art help you to build patterns later on, and give you control over pouring the more complex designs. By practising skills such as the rosetta and the slowsetta (see the next point), a latte artist can develop positioning, cup turning, contrast and definition, before trying to dry foam every single pattern using whatever foam is lying in the jug.

A perfect swan is made up of a tulip base, a controlled rosetta for the wing, slowsetta pouring for the neck and a symmetrical heart for the head – see where I'm going? Master the skills. Then make the seahorse lattes.

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5. Master Slow-Pouring: The Slowsetta

Okay, so there are a couple of different elements to this, so I'll try to be concise. First, we practise the slowsetta. This develops your skill in free-flow pouring, gives you better control over the mixing of the two liquids and, finally, starts you on your journey of tilting and turning the cup as you pour.

There are a couple of different ways to pour the slowsetta, but essentially it involves one flowing pour combining the milk and espresso, which forces the pourer to tilt the flow side to side to create big loops, reminiscent of a stretched-out rosetta. I typically opt for a chunkier pour, where the base is quite simple but the loops are large, like a big leaf. However, some people with very high skill can get even sharper lines and slow the pouring even more.

I'd recommend watching a few videos of this to get an idea, but this is a skill I teach in all my classes to level up latte artists, so they can develop their control and concentration.

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6. Dry Foam: Pour Fast and Confidently

This one's for the real latte art geeks... Dry foam is how we essentially draw whatever we want on coffee. We can use it sparingly to add elements we can't make with the fundamental skills, and we can also use it to excess – but doing so can be tricky to get right.

Perfectly steamed milk will give you a good base for dry foam. However, the longer the pour goes on, the more likely it is that we run into an issue we describe as "bleeding", where the foam on top blurs as we drag it around and ruins whatever semblance of contrast we created.

A few reasons for this are that the milk is too hot, the foam is too thick, the pour is too long, the cup is overfilled, and on and on. As a latte art competitor, most patterns I create (this year, Elmo and Big Bird) start out really blurry, and it's usually because I am taking far too long to pour them, because I'm thinking about it too much during the pour.

As I practise over and over before the competition, the blurring eventually stops or becomes limited, because I am speeding up the process of pouring and becoming more confident with the designs. This can often be an easy fix for complex dry foam pouring like this: by speeding up the pour and often reducing the heat in the milk (below 50°C), we can use the dry foam much more easily.

Confident pouring is usually better than hesitant pouring in all aspects of latte art, because the longer the pour takes, the thicker the coffee becomes, and therefore the harder it is to cut through with your foam. As the surface solidifies, the dry foam is harder to break through, and that eventually leads to bleeding. Once you've worked out the motions, be confident! Trust yourself!

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More tips from Ben coming soon!

About Our Guest Author

Ben Lewis is the UK Latte Art Champion and runs latte art classes to help baristas level up their pouring. You can find more from Ben at bluehourcoffee.co.uk.

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