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What IS a flatwhite?

Flatwhites are made with a double espresso in a 5-5.5oz cup with heated textured milk. The origin is debatable whether it's from NZ or Australia... but since Australia claims most good things and I'm a kiwi, can we side with my country this time on this gem please?!

The milk should be smooth, creamy and have a velvety texture. The milk should be thinner than a latte and "flatter" in head volume.

A flatwhite should be a short, strong tasting coffee with milk. Thats why its so good!

Espresso TIPS

Use good quality specialty coffee beans – often found at a good independent café (or you can order some from my online shop here)
Your grind should be fine, more like fine sand than a powder (Turkish)
Your coffee should look dark, thick in consistency and trail down like a mousetail (thick at the top and taper down).
Espresso should extract at an even speed – not too fast, not too slow
When your espresso starts to look thinner and more watery, “blonde” (a lighter browny/yellow) or starts to “pulse”, wait a second or two and switch the water flow off.

You want your espresso to have a balanced taste and flavour.

Recipe guide

18-20g Ground Coffee in (I use these scales)
30g liquid coffee out
25-30seconds

Like all recipes this is a guide only. The biggest problem when your espresso isn't extracting well, is the grind size. Especially at home, many people don't realise their grind is still far too coarse. I would suggest grinding your coffee finer than you would normally think to, if not just to see what happens. Invest in a good espresso grinder (quite different to a filter grinder).

If your grind is very fine, and is running very slow, then you have two options: