How to Make a Latte: The Ratio, the Milk and the Pour

A latte is espresso topped up with a generous amount of steamed milk and finished with a thin layer of microfoam. To make one, pull a double espresso — about 36 g of liquid from 18 g of coffee — into a warmed 240 ml cup, steam about 150 ml of cold milk to 60–65 °C while letting in only a little air, and pour it into the middle of the shot.

That is the whole drink. What separates a good latte from a cup of hot milk with a coffee taste is proportion and texture, and both are easy to control once you know what each step does.

The recipe

1. Warm the cup with hot water and empty it.
2. Pull a double espresso into it. If you are new to this, the espresso dial-in guide explains how to get a 36 g shot to run in roughly 25–35 seconds and taste right.
3. Steam the milk. Start with cold milk in a cold jug. Put the steam tip just under the surface and let it draw in air with a gentle tearing hiss for only a few seconds — until the milk has grown by about a third. Then lower the tip a little so the milk spins in a whirlpool without taking in more air.
4. Stop at 60–65 °C, when the jug becomes too hot to hold for more than a second or two. Wipe and purge the wand, tap the jug once on the counter and swirl until the milk looks like wet paint.
5. Pour. Tilt the cup towards you and pour into the centre of the espresso from a few centimetres up, so the milk dives under the crema. As the cup fills, level it and bring the jug down close to the surface; the foam will now settle on top, and this is where a pattern can be drawn.

The proportions come from a barista guide published by Arla Foods, which describes a latte as roughly 1 part espresso to 4 parts milk to 1 part foam, served at 150–240 ml, traditionally in a short glass. A double shot, in that guide, is 30–40 g of liquid espresso from 14–20 g of ground coffee, so there is room to adjust to your basket.

Why so little air

The only difference between latte milk and cappuccino milk is how much air you let in at the start. The Arla guide gives clear targets: aerate milk for a latte until it has grown by about a third; for a cappuccino, by about two-thirds. More air makes a thicker, drier cap of foam. Less makes a glossy, pourable liquid with the foam folded through it — the texture called microfoam — which blends with the espresso as it is poured.

Do all of the stretching at the start, while the milk is still cold. Air drawn in early has time to be broken into fine bubbles by the whirlpool; air drawn in at the end stays as visible bubbles on top. The steaming guide goes through the sound to listen for and how to fix big bubbles.

The finishing temperature is a compromise. Warm milk tastes sweeter: a 2005 study in Nature showed that TRPM5, a channel in taste cells involved in sweet taste, responds more strongly as temperature rises, so the same lactose registers more strongly in warm milk. Push the heat too far, though, and milk's whey proteins unfold. A 2025 review of milk heat treatment in Foods traces the resulting cooked flavour to sulfur compounds, such as hydrogen sulfide, released as the whey protein β-lactoglobulin opens up. Stopping at 60–65 °C keeps the drink sweet and hot enough to drink straight away.

How the pour works

When you pour from a few centimetres up, the stream has enough momentum to push beneath the crema, so the milk mixes into the coffee below and the surface stays brown. Bring the jug close to the surface and the stream slows; the lighter foam now spreads across the top instead of diving under it. Arla's guide describes the same two stages: free-pour from up to about 10 cm away, then move in close to finish.

Latte art is just that second stage done with control. A steady stream close to the surface puts down a white circle; wiggling the jug as you pour draws a leaf, and lifting it and cutting through the middle finishes a heart. It only works with microfoam: milk with too much air sits on top in a lump instead of flowing into a shape.

Order matters too. A latte is milk poured into espresso. Reverse it — espresso poured slowly into a glass of foamed milk — and you get a latte macchiato, in which the coffee settles into a band between hot milk below and foam above.

How strong a latte really is

Strength in coffee is measured as total dissolved solids: the percentage of the drink, by weight, that is dissolved coffee. Espresso is typically 6–12%; filter coffee about 1.15–1.35%. Run the numbers for a latte:

• A 36 g double at 10% holds about 3.6 g of dissolved coffee.
• A 250 ml mug of filter coffee at 1.35% holds about 3.4 g.
• Spread through a 240 ml latte — about 190 g of liquid, since part of that volume is air in the foam — the double works out at roughly 1.9% dissolved coffee, more than a typical filter coffee.

So a latte made with a double is not weak coffee. It tastes mild because milk changes how you perceive what is there. In a 2025 study in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, researchers added cow's milk or oat milk to medium- and dark-roasted coffee and tracked both the aroma reaching the nose and what tasters reported. The milks brought their own dairy or caramel-like notes and reduced the perception of bitter, roasted and burnt flavours — yet they did not systematically reduce the release of coffee aroma compounds. The coffee is all still there; your brain simply registers less of it.

This is also why a latte forgives an imperfect shot, and why a good shot can disappear into too much milk. If your latte tastes of nothing much, the fix is usually more coffee — a double instead of a single, or a smaller cup — rather than a darker roast.

Caffeine, calories and sugar

Milk adds no caffeine, so a latte has exactly what its espresso has. The USDA puts restaurant espresso at 212 mg of caffeine per 100 g, which makes a 36 g double about 75 mg. Café shots vary far more than that suggests: when researchers at the University of Glasgow bought espresso from 20 coffee shops, a single serving ranged from 51 to 322 mg. For how that compares with other drinks, see the caffeine guide.

Nearly all the energy comes from the milk. The USDA lists whole milk at 61 kcal per 100 g and skimmed milk at 34 kcal; espresso has about 9 kcal per 100 g, or 3 kcal in a double.

These treat a millilitre of milk as a gram; milk is slightly denser than water, so real figures run a few per cent higher. Every gram of sugar in an unsweetened latte is lactose: the USDA's 4.8 g of carbohydrate per 100 g of whole milk gives about 7 g in the small cup. Flavoured syrups add to that — about 8–9 g a tablespoon, as the coffee syrups guide explains — and the plant milk guide covers oat, soy and almond lattes.

Without an espresso machine

You can get close with equipment you may already own.

• The coffee. A moka pot makes strong, concentrated coffee that stands up to milk, and an AeroPress can brew a short, dense concentrate. Use about 60–80 ml of either in place of the double shot.
• The milk. Heat it to around 60 °C in a pan or the microwave, then pump it in a French press for 15–20 seconds or shake it hard in a half-filled sealed jar. Let it stand a few seconds for the big bubbles to rise, tap, swirl and pour.

Neither brewer makes true espresso, which is brewed at around nine times atmospheric pressure — the espresso guide explains the difference — so the drink will be a little thinner and without crema. It is still a fine milky coffee, and closer to a latte than strong filter coffee with hot milk.

When it goes wrong

A note on names

Latte is simply the Italian word for milk, so asking for "a latte" in Italy may get you a glass of it; the drink is caffè latte or caffellatte. In Italy milky coffees like this are mostly breakfast drinks. Elsewhere the latte has become the default café order, in sizes that range from a short glass to a very large takeaway cup — the ratio scales, but keep enough espresso in it to taste.

For how a latte compares with its relatives, see latte vs cappuccino vs flat white, and for the rest of the menu, the types of coffee drinks guide.