Latte Art Heart - Step-by-Step Guide

Welcome to our easy-to-follow beginner’s guide on how to pour a Latte Art Heart.

Latte art is one of the more exciting aspects of making coffee. It’s a little bit like meditation and creativity brought together while visually enriching someone’s espresso cup.

Coffee art doesn’t enhance the flavour of the coffee per se. That’s what premium freshly roasted coffee beans are for. But what it comes down to, is the same thing as decorative food plating. It adds to the experience of enjoying a coffee, and it also shows that the person who made it cared about your espresso.

While the heart is the most simple and fundamental latte art pattern to learn, it’s a very important one! The heart signifies love, something we all desire. So if you put your heart into learning the heart latte art, there is nothing in the way to also master intermediate designs like the latte art tulip, the rosetta and eventually the more advanced latte art swan.  

As alluded to above, pouring a heart is fairly easy to do - even for beginners. Although, before you get started with even the most basic love heart latte art design, you want to make sure you practice how to steam milk first.

But if you’re ready, let’s dive right into learning how to make a latte art heart.

Latte Art Heart Video Guide

Grab your coffee, watch this video, and get ready to pour beautiful coffee for yourself and those you love. If you prefer to read, scroll past the video for the text version.

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Latte art in general and especially the good ol’ latte art heart are often found on the curriculum of barista courses. Barista courses are perfect for kinesthetic (or hands-on) learners, however, at the end of the day, it comes down to your personal preference (and budget of course!). If you are a visual learner, scroll back up and watch the video. But if you are a ‘reading learner’, then this following step-by-step latte art heart tutorial will be perfect for you.

So without further ado, let’s jump right into it our heart latte art tutorial.

How to Pour Latte Art Heart?

There are just a few simple steps worth remembering when you learn how to make heart latte art. We first set the crema, then we move our jug spout closer to see the white appear in the cup. From here, a simply jug movement will turn your white blob into a heart. Let’s look.

Going with the Flow

The secret to a good latte art heart is to keep a nice even flow of milk. Don’t pour too fast… don’t pour too slow. Keep your movements steady when pouring to help with your consistency.

1. Setting the Crema

This is the first step of all latte art. By the time you’ve watched all my tutorials, hopefully you will know this is the first step! Pour from a height with perfectly textured milk, and let the foam capture the crema on top. Don’t pour too fast or your crema will splash all over the place. If you see any white appear, your jug is too close to the espresso. Pour from more of a height over the top of the jug and watch it disappear.

2. Forming a “Bulb”

When the cup is 3/4 full and the crema is set perfectly, move your jug spout closer to the crema. You’ll know your jug is close enough when you start to see a bulb appear.

3. Straighten the Cup

As the bulb continues to form, gently straighten the cup to avoid milk spilling, and also to aid in the formation of the top of the heart.

From here you want to just hold that nice even flow, to let the bulb expand.

4. Make it a Heart

Now that the cup is almost full, you should notice top the heart is almost fully formed. All you need to do is lift up the jug, and pull through, to finish creating the top and the bottom of the heart.

Heart Latte Art Tips

A couple of things to think about to perfect your hearts..

Getting your jug angle perfect also helps you to create a nice symmetrical heart.

Make sure you are careful when setting the crema, if not you might pour a great pattern but it won't look good if it's washed out.

Once you get the  basic heart down, try wiggling your jug back and fourth as the bulb is forming to create something more textured.

The heart is a great pattern to start off your latte art journey. Remember quality milk and espresso will make it a lot easier to get your patterns helping - thanks to La Marzocco for lending me the linea mini for this series!

Milk Texture, Milk Type & Temperature

It's important - as it is with most latte art - that your milk isn't too thin. If so it will be harder to set the crema, and your pattern might slide around in the cup. If you’re pouring one coffee, your milk should expand by 1cm in the jug when steaming if you have the right amount of froth in your milk.

For pouring latte art, using full cream milk will make your life easier. The higher fat content holds the microfoam together much better, making it easier to pour latte art patterns. If you need drink alternate milks such as almond milk or oat milk, I’d recommend buying one which is specifically designed to be used with coffee. Almond Breeze (cafe version) or Minor Figures Oat Milk are two examples.

Lastly - your milk temperature will also effect your ability to pour latte art. I’d recommend keeping your milk to 65°C maximum when pouring latte art. If you need help with this, you can buy a milk thermometer for your jug.

Ingredients & Equipment

As well as using high quality milk, a few pieces of equipment will help you to make consistently great latte art.

Quality Coffee – Freshly roasted coffee has better crema, which is a lot easier to pour latte art into. Once coffee gets stale (more than 4 weeks after roasting), the crema tends to get ‘sticky’, making it hard to set the crema and pour latte art in to. Our coffee is roasted fresh each week - check out our current coffees here.

Best Milk Jug – The best milk jug for latte art is the one that you practice with a lot. However, cheaper milk jugs quite often have misaligned spouts which can make it a bit harder to pour with. I like the Barista Hustle Milk Jugs, as they are manufactured carefully to make sure the spouts are well aligned with the handle. They also have a great spout for pouring.

Coffee Machine – For latte art, it is important that your coffee machine has good enough steam pressure to get the whirlpool going and create silky milk. It’s also important to be able to pull good shots of espresso if you’re trying to learn how to pour latte art. If you need help choosing a machine, get in touch with us via the contact us page and we’ll help you choose some good equipment for your budget.

Keep Frothin'!

We hope you enjoyed this heart latte art tutorial.

We’d love to see your learning efforts! So why not post some of your hearts on Instagram and tag us with @thecoffeefusion. We'll make sure to provide you with some feedback😊

Also, remember if you need some coffee while you're on your latte art learning journey, use the discount code 'latteart' for 20% off all Coffeefusion coffee. Keyboard Warrior is especially good for milk coffee and latte art.

Until then… keep frothin’!