The coffee tree is an independent Loveland coffee company deicated to serving the best coffee. They are Loveland, Colorado's first and only coffee shop coffee house that is also a micro coffee roaster. They make there pastries from scratch every morning and bake them in their store. One of the owners, Heidi Thrash, competed in the Milrock Latte Art contest in Chicago. Free wifi organic milk scones cakes breads fresh. The perfect latte There is an art to the pour, and Heidi Thrash keeps pouring It took Heidi Thrash about six months before she could see a design. “You try and you try and about 300 lattes later, you get a faint design,” said Thrash, co-owner of The Coffee Tree, a cafe inside Anthology Book Co. in downtown Loveland. But to master latte art, the barista first has to master the art of making a latte. “Latte art is proof that the latte is prepared right,” she said. “It’s definitely icing on the cake, but the cake first has to be made right.” Latte art is the art of pouring milk into an espresso drink to create a design at the top of the cup. “It does tend to spoil people,” Thrash said with a laugh. Thrash and co-owner Michael Thrash are part of a growing national trend of turning a typical espresso drink into a work of art. Both know how to make designs — rosettas (a leaf-like figure), hearts and variations of the two — by perfectly pouring the milk into a perfectly made shot of espresso. The shots of espresso must be prepared just so — the right volume and strength, and roasted just right — and the milk must be steamed just so — the right consistency with no air bubbles — all while constantly adjusting for slight changes in room temperature and humidity. Then baristas have to know how to work their wrists. “It takes a lot of wiggling,” Cornelius said. “You really have to know how to control your movement.” But after a while — it took both about a half a year to learn the skill — something that looks like a design starts to appear. “At first you get a line that lost all of its leaves,” Cornelius said. “A Charlie Brown Christmas tree, as we call it,” Thrash said with a laugh. It’s the whole science of perfecting the latte — knowing that the ground espresso beans have to be pressed with about 40 pounds of pressure, making sure water is spread evenly over the coffee grounds — that’s behind the growing popularity of speciality coffee. “It’s the quality-driven niche looking for a way to differentiate from the competition,” said Mike Ferguson, spokesman for the California-based Specialty Coffee Association of America. In the early 1990s, when David Schomer, owner of Espresso Vivace in Seattle, introduced latte art to American consumers, there were about 2,000 coffee shops in the nation, Ferguson said. Now there are about 24,000 — with more than 100 added every month. “Latte art is just another edge on the competition,” he said. Since the early 1990s, latte art’s popularity gradually increased. After the first formal United States Barista Championships were held in 2002, the trade really took off, Ferguson said. “I’ve seen customers take out their phone camera and take a picture of their coffee,” he said. “They send it to their friends to say ‘look what I drank this morning.’” Now there are national latte art competitions, national and international barista championships and books and Web sites dedicated to latte art. Some baristas use the tip of a thermometer to etch designs into the milky top; others, such as Thrash and Cornelius, make the designs just by manipulating the pour. “You have to really be into it,” Thrash said. Latte art is a short-lived pleasure, though — as soon as bubbles creep up and the customer gets thirsty, the artwork turns into a milky swirled cup of coffee. “We’d do this all day,” Thrash said, handing a freshly designed latte to a customer, before adding with a laugh: “I guess we do do this all day.” They are pretty excited about Dazbog moving into the new Lincoln Place apartments and helping keep Starbucks out while at the same time cultivating downtown.