by the Night Writer

Our favorite coffee shop is The Black Sheep in South St. Paul where owner (and my official 50th birthday barista) Peter first wowed my wife with an awesome and unexpected leaf design worked into the foam of her latte. It was an impressive demonstration well beyond my own bag of tricks for catering to my wife, but I didn’t feel threatened.

After all, Peter may draw pictures in her coffee at his shop, but I’m still the guy who can bring it to her in bed. That division works well for me and having a local artiste nearby makes going out for a coffee a little more special. The pressure on me may be growing, however.

An article in today’s Wall Street Journal (subscription required) suggests that time and money are no obstacle for those who want to create such foamy, temporary masterpieces in their own home.

Once an obscure skill practiced by a handful of baristas, latte art is invading the home. Amateur artists have posted thousands of photos and videos of leaves, flowers and swans made in foam, on Web sites like YouTube, Rate My Rosetta and CoffeeGeek.

Coffee shops offer classes in creating designs, and latte artists organize winner-take-all cash contests, or “throw downs,” in which amateurs challenge each other, as well as local professionals. Espresso-machine vendors are doing a brisk business in special pitchers and custom steam tips that are affixed to machines to aid milk frothing. One online retailer says sales of its $79 “Latte Art Beginner’s Pack,” with instructional DVD, frothing pitcher and milk thermometer, are up 65% this year.

The pastime is not for those with weak wills — or shallow pockets. High-end home espresso machines sell for as much as $7,000. Beginners can go through multiple gallons of milk a week as they practice.

Oh, great, so I need time, talent, money … and, apparently, a lot of milk.

Some aspiring artists concentrate on the pour. First-timers mistakenly think they can paint the design on top of the coffee, says Nicholas Lundgaard, a 23-year-old software engineer in Houston, who took up latte art three years ago after seeing photos on the CoffeeGeek Web site. Actually, it’s “a fluid canvas, where shapes fan out from the place you’re pouring,” he says.

Mr. Lundgaard spent evenings hunched over his espresso machine, studying exemplars on YouTube and rehearsing his “wiggle,” the back and forth motion of the hand pouring milk. To avoid wasting costly milk, Mr. Lundgaard practiced with water, switching to milk every now and then to gauge his progress.

Another foam artist, Milwaukee pathologist Robert Hall, says he had to pour five or six drinks a day for a year before he could get a rosetta right every time. One big obstacle was his wife’s preference for skim milk, which produces stiffer, less yielding foam than milk with lots of fat, he says.

Check that … I need time, talent, money, a lot of milk … and I have to work on my “wiggle.” Isn’t there an easier way? Well, it turns out that there is.

Not everyone wants to suffer for their art. After seeing a latte-art video, Oleksiy Pikalo, a 31-year-old electrical engineer from Somerville, Mass., decided there had to be an “engineering approach.” Using a kit and spare parts found on eBay, he built a programmable computer printer that stamps designs — such as words or corporate logos — on foamed drinks in edible brown ink. One design shows a kingly figure saying, “Can your latte do this?”

Mr. Pikalo presented his invention at a national computer-graphics conference this week and has started a company, OnLatte, to sell his machine, at a tentative price of $1,500. His YouTube video has drawn more than 818,000 views and 2,500 comments.

A latte printer? Really, the things you can do with spare parts found on eBay! It kind of sounds like the coffee-blogging answer to Twitter. Click here to watch a neat video of the craft and a demonstration of the latte printer.

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