27/05/2026
Taste is a very subjective thing and everyone has their one preference.
When it comes to flat white, the perfect flat white to me tastes almost like a milkshake dessert. I want to have the coffee flavors in a very balanced and harmonious way supported by the natural sweetness of the milk. And of course the milk texture has to be perfect.
When extraction is too strong or the ratio of espresso to milk is off, it happens very easily that you only taste, depending on coffee, a heavy bitterness or a too intense acidity, or both together which will make it impossible to taste the true coffee flavors.
Another thing I notice very often when extraction is off, you will taste some fruity notes at the beginning, but after a few minutes the flavors will change into a generic coffee taste, which most often is described as chocolaty or cacao flavors. This is something a try to avoid when dialing in the coffees.
We aim to keep the extraction in a range that our flat whites taste sweet and balanced and we want to let the coffee speak for itself. For example when we have a washed Ethiopian coffee on the menu the flat white will be very light and delicate with sweet floral notes, we will not push the extraction just that it taste stronger for the trade off loosing those very delicate floral notes.
Because of my own preference we already started in 2014 with serving filter roasts from as espresso. Espresso roast have always been too strong for my own preferences and I was always missing the real flavors of the coffee. Back then we already pulled kind of turbo shots on our La Marzocco Strada with extraction times below 20sec. It was nice to see when the turbo shot paper from got published in 2015 that we haven’t been that wrong with our espresso recipes.
Of course we sometimes have customers that find our style of flat white too soft / light, but thats totally ok. Taste is subjective and everyone should drink what makes them happy !
