What Temperature Should a Flat White Be?

I had a really interesting interaction with a customer in the café this week that got me thinking about flat whites, milk temperature and the strange problem of trying to make the “perfect” coffee for lots of different people.

This particular customer is a regular. He’s been coming in for years and, like me, he likes his flat whites cooler than most people do.

Someone else had made his coffee and I brought it over to his table. Before he'd even tasted it, he put the back of his hand against the side of the cup.

“That’s too hot.”

And I was a bit taken aback.

Not necessarily because I disagreed with him. In fact, quite the opposite.

I think flat whites taste better cooler

When we first opened the café, I was almost evangelical about milk temperature. I had little manifestos on the tables explaining why we steamed our milk cooler and why I thought coffee tasted better that way.

Traditionally, somewhere around 55–65°C is a pretty normal range for steamed milk in a speciality coffee shop. I’ve always preferred the lower end of that.

Actually, if I'm making a flat white for myself, I might go much further.

Give me a flat white at 35–40°C and I'm pretty happy. Somewhere around body temperature, where I can immediately take a big mouthful rather than cautiously sipping at it, is delicious to me.

At cooler temperatures I find the milk tastes wonderfully sweet and you can taste much more of the espresso underneath it. There’s no waiting five minutes for the coffee to cool down before you can actually enjoy it.

The problem is that I'm definitely in the minority.

Making coffee for yourself is different to running a café

This is something I've learned from years of working in coffee.

What I think tastes best and what most customers expect to receive aren't necessarily the same thing.

If I served every customer a 40°C flat white because that's how I personally enjoy drinking one, we'd spend half the day remaking coffees.

An example I used to love preaching to customers in the cafe was about Gordon Ramsay not cooking steaks 'Well Done'. He's an excellent chef who cooks the steak perfectly to taste best. However, He now owns around a million restaurants and I bet they cook steak exactly how the customers want it.

In fact, one of the most common requests we get is for drinks to be extra hot.

So there has to be a balance.

I want the baristas in our café to make coffee in a way that we think tastes delicious, but we're also making coffee for someone else. There's a point where having strong opinions about coffee becomes less important than listening to the person who's actually going to drink it.

And that brings me back to my customer.

The strange thing was, his coffee wasn't actually too hot

I took the flat white back and we made it again.

But I also tasted the original.

It was great.

The milk temperature was pretty much exactly where I'd want a flat white that we were serving to a customer. My baristas are really good and there wasn't actually anything wrong with how the milk had been steamed.

What he'd felt was the cup.

We keep our ceramic cups on top of the espresso machine so they're warm when we make drinks. On this occasion, the ceramic itself was considerably hotter than the coffee inside it.

By touching the outside of the cup and immediately deciding the coffee was too hot, he hadn't actually measured the temperature of the drink at all.

And because we were busy, I didn't really know how to have that conversation without it becoming confrontational.

So we made it again.

This time I cooled the cup down first, made another flat white and took it over.

Problem solved.

Sort of.

If you like your coffee a certain way, tell your barista

The funny thing about the whole interaction is that I basically agree with him.

I don't like really hot flat whites either.

But I think there's a useful lesson here about ordering coffee.

If you know that you like something differently to most people, just tell us.

If you want a cooler flat white, say:

“Could I have that not too hot, please?”

Or even:

“Could you steam the milk to about 50°C?”

That's genuinely helpful.

Baristas aren't mind readers and there isn't one objectively correct temperature for a flat white. We're trying to make something that you'll enjoy drinking.

The same applies if you like an extra-hot latte, a longer espresso, less foam on your cappuccino or your Americano with less water.

Ask for it.

A good café shouldn't be offended by you knowing what you like.

Is there a perfect temperature for a flat white?

I don't think so.

There is definitely a point where milk gets too hot. Once you start getting up around 70°C and beyond, I find the flavour and texture of the milk start to suffer. That's not something we'd intentionally serve in the café.

But below that? I've grown up a lot in the 12 years since we opened and I was writing slightly preachy manifestos about the correct temperature for steamed milk.

These days, I think it's much more subjective.

I might think a flat white tastes incredible at 50°C. Someone else might take one sip and immediately ask for it hotter. Neither of us is necessarily wrong.

Ultimately, who am I to tell a grown adult how they should enjoy their coffee?

I still have strong opinions about how coffee tastes best. That's probably inevitable after spending so many years making, roasting and drinking the stuff. But there's a difference between having an opinion and deciding everyone else has to agree with it.

So if you like your flat white cooler, extra hot, or somewhere in between, just tell your barista when you order.

The best flat white is the one you actually enjoy drinking.