Brioso Barista Serves Up Happiness with World Class Latte Art
Brioso Barista Serves Up Happiness with World Class Latte Art
by Christina Best
“Let me just start by saying: Latte art doesn’t matter,” Robin Myers, barista lead at the Brioso Roastery and Coffee, tells me. Then, for clarification: “It’s about the [coffee’s] ingredients, not how it looks.”
Myers’s love of latte art, coffee production, and customer service is apparent shortly after our introduction when he offers to make my favorite Brioso drink—the Ohio maple latte. (A damn good cup of coffee.) With 11 years in the industry, Myers has become a bit of an authority in the Columbus coffee scene. His career began in 2005 after his dad, observing Myers’s creative tendencies and introversion, encouraged him to get a job at a coffee shop.
Artistic and driven, Myers has participated in three incidences of the “Latte Art World Championship Open.”
The competition is part of Coffee Fest, an industry-specific expo held four times a year around the United States. This bracket-style, sudden death competition has 64 participants and eight rounds. Competitors have three minutes to produce their best latte art. Difficulty of pattern, symmetry, aesthetic appeal, level of creativity, and speed at which the art is produced are all taken into account in the scoring.
Myers first competed in Chicago, where he recalls being nervous. Even though he felt more ready and prepared at his most recent competition, held in Dallas, he felt as though he was battling not only the other participants but himself, as well. Reflecting on the competitions, Myers says he enjoyed having the opportunity to represent Brioso and the Columbus community at such a large event. Myers will be competing again in Nashville this coming March.
Latte Art is surprisingly complicated for such a novel thing — a high-level understanding of liquid physics and surgical precision goes into making an Instagram-worthy latte. The espresso and milk must be made perfectly and in unison to produce the best art. Speed, angle, and height are all variables a barista must consider as they pour the steaming hot milk over the espresso.
So, what’s Myers’s favorite pattern to create? It’s the rosetta that myers believes requires the most skill because of its level of difficulty and its rareness — it does not exist in any form naturally.
Myers feels that latte art has become more popular in our increasingly visual society. He also says his work has taught him the importance of not taking life too seriously and staying humble, “because there’s always someone looking up to you.” He also aspires to be, “the most positive person in someone’s day.” While a form of creative expression, Myers loves that latte art has the potential to bring a smile to someone’s face.
In his free time, Myers enjoys cooking, playing the drums, and spending time with his fiancée, Mackenzie, and dog, Tucker. He also captures pictures of latte art “in the wild,” which can be found here: www.instagram.com/latteinthewild.
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