Dec. 17—ROCHESTER — A variety of participants and spectators gathered together for sweet treats, raffle prizes and an intense latte art competition on Saturday, Dec. 16, 2023.

Café Steam held its second annual holiday latte art competition at its One Discovery Square location. There were 18 participants in the single-elimination, bracket-style tournament with three local judges.

“We are joined by our three judges,” said William Forsman, co-owner of Café Steam. “Bryce Fogelson of Lumen Coffee, Donna Unseth formerly of Black Stack Brewing and at one time a barista herself at Café Steam, and then my sister who knows nothing about lattes or latte art, but perhaps will provide an unbiased opinion as to which one she thinks looks nice.”

The judges were in charge of grading the latte art on three different criteria: complexity, contrast and symmetry. No category had more weight than the others, but each was important in its own way.

“Latte art is the small design that may be made on the top of a latte,” said Forsman. “It is the influence and product of an experienced barista. Typically the more experienced the barista is, the better the latte art and so now we created a tournament style competition to see who is the best at it. The skills involved are how you mitigate the amount of foam that you’re introducing into the milk, how hot you’re allowing the milk to become, how quickly you’re pouring and any other of the environmental factors that may be influencing the latte itself.”

The contestants included a mixture of local baristas and out of town guests; everyone had different levels of experience. There was a range of first time attempts to baristas who have years of experience creating foam art. Each contestant had time to practice their art skills prior to the competition to get them familiar with the ingredients, machinery and more to ensure they put their best work forward for the competition.

The winner of this year’s contest was Jared Dennison from La Crosse, Wisconsin. He drove to Rochester with his co-worker, Paige Weier, who competed in the third place round.

Dennison beat Reghan Sage, a customer at his local coffee store, for the win.

“The cafe we work at has featured coffee from Café Steam’s sister business,” said Dennison. “So it’s just like a really fun way to just kind of show up and support like the greater regional coffee scene.”

Dennison has been doing latte art for about five years. He was starting to really feel confident in his work before the pandemic but had to brush up on his technique after cafes began to open up again.

“I felt like it was pretty good and COVID happened and like all the cafes closed down and then I didn’t work for a while and I got like out of practice,” said Dennison. “It’s taken me like almost since COVID to get back.”

Weier competed for third place where she lost 2-1 to Corrie Strommen, a Rochester local. Strommen worked for Cafe Steam from 2015 to 2021. It’s been about two and a half years since she’s worked with coffee, so she was shocked with how well the muscle memory came back to her.

“I would say I started pouring decent lattes about a year after I started but it was a lot of repetitious pouring over and over again and a lot of direction for more knowledgeable baristas,” said Strommen. “It’s a lot about steaming the milk. A lot about the tilt of the cup when you go to pour it and there’s a lot of little finicky things that go into it that people maybe wouldn’t think about.”

Café Steam is planning on continuing the event next holiday season and invites any barista at any skill level to participate.