Come! Learn a few "big tricks" of coffee and flowers, no longer worry about the circle of friends no one likes
What can you do in 3 minutes? In the hands of Chongqing's young man Liang Fan, three minutes seemed to become "magic". He held a coffee cup in one hand and a milk jug in one hand, and a coffee drawing pattern slowly appeared.
Recently, Liang Fan produced "the most beautiful retrograde" Lahua with his superb craftsmanship and boarded CCTV, which aroused admiration. On a coffee cup with a diameter of 10 cm, he painted a warm image of a "white angel" wearing a white coat, smiling, and wings on both sides.
Speaking of the original intention of creation, Liang Fan said that during the epidemic, the majority of medical workers did not fear the danger and moved to Hubei to support the fight against the disease. So he integrated his emotions into the coffee garland, and it took only a few hours from concept to practice on paper.
Coffee lovers
In the coffee lahua world of China, Liang Fan is quite influential. He was the champion of the Chinese division of the World Lahua Art Competition in 2017 and 2018. In 2018, he also represented China in the World Finals and won the third place. Surprisingly, Liang Fan became a monk halfway through the coffee business.
Liang Fan was born in Chongqing in 1993. After graduating from high school in 2011, he went to a coffee vocational training school to learn basic coffee product making. Out of interest, he started to work in a cafe. Starting from the waiter, he washed cups, learned drink making, cut fruit plates, and slowly Be a barista from an ordinary barista.
When he first came into contact with Lahua, he was stunned by this magical skill: "It is possible to create such beautiful pictures on coffee!" So he began to participate in large and small Lahua competitions and accumulated experience.
Lahua creative artist full of thinking
In 2011, shortly after the art Lahua spread to China, most of the people pulled out simple patterns such as leaves, feathers, hearts, and so on. There were few teaching videos on the Internet, and basically they needed to rely on enthusiasts to learn by themselves.
The principle of pulling flowers is actually very simple: the rich oil extracted from coffee is used to control the shaking of the pulling cylinder by hand, so that the milk foam and fat are merged to form a multi-layered line.
If you want to show more complicated patterns, you need the barista's profound skills and creativity. "The presentation of the drawing flower is related to the height, position, shaking, inclination angle and injection amount of the drawing flower cylinder. Generally, the drawing flower should be completed within three minutes, and too long will affect the taste and pattern." , When drawing flowers in coffee, he not only pays attention to aesthetics in visual appreciation, but also constantly improves the smooth taste of milk foam and the way of coffee fusion, so as to achieve "color, fragrance, taste, shape, art" Complete artistic effects.
Each unique drawing pattern contains the barista's ingenuity. Liang Fanhui will now depict ideas on paper, and then practice and improve. At present, Liang Fan's creative masterpieces include pandas, unicorns, little fairies, etc., and every cup makes consumers directly call "don't want to drink".
The hardship behind practicing hard
In 2015, Liang Fan won the first PCA Coffee Lahua Asia Pacific Championship. Behind the achievements is his boring and arduous training life. The diameter of the coffee cup is as large as 10 cm and as small as 2, 3 cm. So far, he has practiced tens of thousands of cups.
"The usual Lahua practice is to make yourself a muscle memory. Even if you don't think about it, you can complete the coffee making and Lahua movements in a cloud. If you don't have a good rest before the game or you are nervous on the field, you can pass Muscle memory successfully completed the game. "Liang Fan said with a smile, in order to develop the feel, it is common to train 100 cups or even 300 cups of the same pattern every day. Lock the door of the room, turn off the phone, and spend a maximum of ten hours a day in non-stop, and practice in a separate space to practice vomiting. Getting started with coffee lahua is simple, but you can only stick to it if you really love it and be patient.
On June 3, 2020, the competition for the new World Lahua Art Competition in China will be held in Shanghai. Liang Fan started another round of practice. He said that his expectation is to once again win the Chinese championship and represent the Chinese team to win the world championship.
After reading these beautiful Lahua works, are you ready to give it a try? Xiaoxin specially invited Mr. Liang Fan to give you a flower-drawing skill class ~
Lahua and carved flowers are collectively referred to as milk lahua art. The former is to directly "pull" the pattern through technical actions such as wrist shaking while pouring hot milk into espresso, the latter is to use chocolate sauce and other accessories, as well as toothpicks and carved flowers Tools such as pens do engraving work to make the patterns perfect, and the production process is mainly divided into two types:
1. Direct pour method (Free Pour) to control the milk jug, pour milk into coffee through different shaking amplitude, speed and milk jug height, draw out different patterns by hand, and pay attention to proficiency skills.
2. Etching slowly pours the milk foam into the coffee, pulls out the basic composition, and draws various patterns using flower needles or toothpicks to carve out. The technical difficulty is low, but it requires creativity. Entry-level slow swing leaf operation skills: The starting action of pulling flowers is to shake the wrist holding the pulling cup left and right, the focus is to steadily swing the wrist horizontally back and forth.
Milk and coffee are fused to the third of the cup and drained. When close to the liquid surface, use a large flow of water. Use your arms to slowly swing left and right, and gradually move the flower cup backwards. When closing the cup, a thin straight line was drawn forward, drawing the stems of the leaves in the cup as the end, and a slow swing of the leaves was completed.
Teacher Liang Fan told Xiaoxin: If you want to do a good job of drawing flowers, you should pay attention to these points:
1. Beginners should realize that there are many points of attention that affect the success of a cup of pull flowers, and each link may cause failure, such as milk foam stability, milk foam and coffee fusion, cleanliness of the liquid level, pull cylinder and Cup distance, flow stability, arm swing amplitude, etc. Seemingly simple peach hearts and leaves, in order to produce smoothly, Teacher Liang also experienced failures and at least practiced hundreds or thousands of cups. Therefore, repeated practice is the only way to succeed.
2. The most difficult thing is to froth the milk froth. The thickened milk froth has no fluidity. The thinned milk froth will float, and there is no way to fix it on the surface of the coffee.
3. The drawing technique must be mastered in place, otherwise the resulting pattern is not symmetrical; use a small stream of water when finishing up, arm strength control should be pondered, and you will fail if you are not careful.
Text: Zhong Yang
Photography: Zhou Yi
Video: Xiao Jiangchuan