Latte art: Brazilians make drawings on coffee with milk; see – 03/20/2024 – Café na Prensa

Eduardo Olímpio finished high school in 2015, with the question of millions of young Brazilians: “what now?”. Study or work?

While trying to decide what to do with his life, he spent time preparing coffee at a bakery managed by his sister in his hometown, São Lourenço, in the south of Minas Gerais.

One day, when serving a coffee with milk, the surface of the drink accidentally took on a shape that looked like a heart. It was there that he realized that, depending on how he poured the milk over the coffee, he would be able to make a drawing.

At first, it was just the heart, which he discovered by chance and perfected until it had a precise shape. But sometimes groups of friends arrived to have a cup of coffee and didn’t like receiving a cup with a heart on it.

Eduardo therefore needed to create new designs to please his clientele. And so he started making other figures, always using only coffee and milk.

“At the time I didn’t know there was latte art. I thought I was creating this drawing in the cafe”, recalls the barista, now 25 years old, with humor.

He only discovered that he wasn’t the pioneer when he saw a video on the internet of a barista making several designs on espresso with steamed milk. It was then that he realized that what he did had a name: latte art.

He ran to YouTube, typed “latte art” in the search field and started analyzing how baristas did it. She looked at the movement of his hands with the milk jug, where they started and how they made the lines. And she tried to reproduce those drawings.

Eduardo’s work began to be successful in São Lourenço. A coffee shop focusing on specialty coffee discovered that “a boy was making latte art” at the bakery. He was hired by the café and then began practicing with more sophisticated equipment.

As time went by, São Lourenço became too small for the young miner’s skills. He went to work at a coffee shop in Curitiba, an important specialty coffee hub.

But when they suggested that he compete in football championships, latte art, Eduardo didn’t even consider it. He liked to make his drawings to serve customers, but he would get nervous if someone approached with a camera to record or take a photo. His hand was shaking and he couldn’t do his job satisfactorily. Competing in a competition in which you would be evaluated, filmed and observed by thousands of people would be unfeasible.

It was then that he began working with a psychologist specialized in helping to deal with the pressures of sports competitions. The result couldn’t have been better: in 2022, in the first Brazilian championship he competed in, he became champion.

With that, he went to represent Brazil at the World Cup, held in November 2023, in Taipei (Taiwan). He was among the top 12, after falling in the semi-final stage.

This weekend, Eduardo defends his title in the new edition of the Brazilian Championship of Latte Artwhich will be played in Brasília between March 22nd and 24th.

After spending time in Curitiba, the barista now lives in São Paulo and is not affiliated with any coffee shop. As an ambassador for a plant-based milk brand, he often teaches courses and workshops.

For those who want to start drawing in the cafe, he recommends looking for references and watching lots of videos. “Barista has to be curious. At first, I could only do it by watching the video. Then, just by looking at it, I could reproduce it. Now I create my own designs”, he says.

Today, eight years after finishing high school without knowing what to do, Eduardo is a reference in latte art In Brazil, he acts as an ambassador for a large plant-based milk company and is a frequent presence at industry events. Doubts about the future no longer seem to afflict him.

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