How to: the perfect cappuccino

A delicious cup before you go to work, at work, after work. Whenever. But how do you make a barista-worthy cappuccino?

We’ll break down the cappuccino step by step to explain every aspect as clearly as possible.

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Coffee beans

Let’s start with the coffee beans. The two coffee beans most commonly used to make a delicious espresso are Arabica and Robusta beans. The name of the latter may already give it away: the flavour of Robusta espresso is robust and full-bodied. For a somewhat more subtle espresso, you should choose Arabica beans. Of course, you’ll be adding milk to a cappuccino, so if you still want to taste the espresso properly, we recommend Robusta beans.

You then grind the roasted beans to a medium-fine to fine consistency. Espresso is made very quickly (the water runs through the coffee rapidly under high pressure), so to extract as much flavour from the coffee as possible, you need to make sure the coffee itself is fine enough to provide plenty of surface area for the water to reach.

The coffee machine

Right, you have your coffee. Now for the machine. How are you going to make your espresso? With a trendy espresso machine, a percolator or an ordinary filter coffee machine?

With an espresso machine, everything basically happens automatically. Add the right coffee, press it down firmly (very important) and make the coffee. With a filter coffee machine, things are a little different. You won’t be able to make a true espresso with this appliance. The coffee isn’t concentrated enough, and there isn’t enough pressure behind the water either. But! You can make delicious strong, Italian style coffee. For this, use beans specifically suited to both an ordinary coffee machine and a percolator: Moka beans. The coffee you can make with these beans is bold and strong. If you make it even stronger than usual (more coffee with less water), you’ll suddenly be a lot closer to espresso.

A third option is the percolator. Because this method of making coffee requires patience and the water runs slowly through the coffee, it’s important to use a coarse grind for percolator coffee. Other than that, you mainly need patience.

Milk and foam

For a cappuccino, you should use two-thirds milk. So: 1/3 espresso, 2/3 milk. Of that 2/3 milk, 1/3 should be foam, and the remaining part should be ‘foamy milk’. So: you need to froth it all, with the thickest foam going on top. Not as a thin layer, but as a prominent part of your cappuccino.

We previously wrote about which milk gives you the very, very best layer of foam on your cappuccino: cow’s milk, naturally. If you want a plant-based alternative, oat milk is a good option.

If you use a fancy espresso machine, it’s great if it has a built-in milk frother. If so, when frothing the milk, make sure you don’t stop until you have to pull your hand away because of the pain. That sounds worse than it is. It should simply be hot, but not too hot. Important: the milk must not boil. In that case, your pain threshold would be very high indeed. Start with cold milk, which warms up as you froth it.

If you don’t have a built-in milk frother, you’ll have to whisk it yourself. Here too, start with cold milk. Whisk it with a whisk, put it in the microwave, whisk it again and put it back in the microwave. How long? It depends on what you see happening. So you have to stay with it. When the milk foam rises, take it out, whisk out the air bubbles and pour it over your espresso. When pouring, hold back the foam briefly so that the regular milk enters the coffee first. In all cases, your milk foam should consist of microfoam: a shiny, billowy, silky-smooth layer of foam.