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Barista

Lavazza at Purdue

Lavazza at Purdue logo

January 2025 – Present · West Lafayette, IN2 min read

I have pulled shots and poured latte art at Purdue’s Lavazza café since January 2025. The job might be the least technical entry on this site, but there is a surprising amount of technique behind pouring the same leaf twice.

Latte art as process control

A good pour is process control. Milk temperature, microfoam with no visible bubbles, pitcher height, and pour rate are the inputs. The rosetta, the leaf-looking pattern, is the output. Get one input wrong and the leaf blurs. The feedback loop is two minutes and a customer is waiting.

The patterns below are a rosetta, a heart, a tulip, and a feather. Same four inputs every time. What changes is how you move the pitcher to control liquid flow.

Winged rosetta in a ceramic cup next to the milk pitcher Heart pour in a to-go cup by the espresso machine Tulip pour in a to-go cup A second tulip pour in a to-go cup Feather pour in a tall to-go cup

More pours are coming soon! The camera roll grows faster than I can update this page.

The Ultimate Takeaway

Tight tolerances feel the same whether the material is carbon fiber or steamed milk.