How Does Caramel Macchiato Differ From a Classic Macchiato?

A classic macchiato is an espresso marked with a small amount of milk foam, made to tell the milk version apart from the plain shot. Caramel macchiato is a different drink: a sweet latte that appeared in the 1990s, built on vanilla syrup and caramel syrup, with no direct lineage to the original macchiato despite the shared name.

The original macchiato came about because early beans were roasted very dark and tasted sharply bitter. A little milk softened that pungency and made the small cup smoother. Caramel macchiato instead grew out of the sweeter, larger milk drinks that became popular later. The two differ in size, recipe, and history, so ordering one rarely delivers the other.

Macchiato and Caramel Macchiato have similar names and are often mistaken for the same coffee, but in reality, they differ significantly in definition, recipe, and historical background. Macchiato was originally an espresso with a small amount of milk added, marked with milk foam to distinguish the version with milk; while Caramel Macchiato is a sweet latte that emerged in the 1990s, made with vanilla syrup and caramel syrup, and has no direct lineage with Macchiato. This article will sort out the origin and decline of Macchiato, as well as the birth and recipe characteristics of Caramel Macchiato, to help coffee enthusiasts clearly distinguish these two beverages.

Since Macchiato and Caramel Macchiato differ by only two characters, many friends directly apply the impression of Caramel Macchiato to Macchiato, thinking that Macchiato is just a sweet milk coffee without caramel. Although Macchiato is hardly seen on menus today, if you have the chance to order one, you will find that what the shop serves is not the large sweet milk coffee you imagined, but a small cup of coffee with an extremely rich flavor.

Good heavens!!! Isn't this outright fraud?

Not at all! Although Macchiato and Caramel Macchiato share the name "Macchiato," from a certain perspective, they are not the same type of coffee. So today, Front Street Coffee will talk about where exactly Macchiato and Caramel Macchiato differ! Macchiato and Caramel Macchiato Below are two espressos, one normal and one with a small amount of milk added. Which one is the espresso with milk?

‍‍ The answer is the one on the left; it's really not easy to notice without a careful look~ This is actually only natural, and it was precisely for this reason that Macchiato was invented! In the early years, coffee beans were not of ideal quality and were roasted extremely dark, resulting in an extremely intense bitterness in the extracted coffee. This bitterness was strong and pungent, and many people found it hard to accept. Therefore, some ingredients needed to be added to dilute the bitterness, and milk was the perfect choice. Adding a small amount of milk not only diluted the bitterness and softened the pungency, but most importantly made the espresso overall smoother and easier to drink. So at that time, most customers would ask the barista to add a little milk to the coffee to reduce the negative experience caused by bitterness. But as shown in the question at the beginning, merely adding a small amount of milk does not noticeably change the appearance of the coffee. With extremely high output, baristas simply had no time to carefully distinguish. So they came up with an idea: dot a little milk foam on the surface of the espresso as a way to differentiate.

This practice gradually became popular, and to make ordering easier for customers, this espresso with a small amount of milk and a little milk foam was named "Macchiato." Macchiato means "branded" or "marked," and naming a coffee after the milk foam used as a mark is truly fitting. However, as bean quality improved, espresso no longer had that pungent, intense bitterness, and the demand for Macchiato gradually decreased, eventually being removed from the menus of major coffee shops and phased out. In the 1990s, a coffee called Caramel Macchiato burst onto the scene. It can be said to be a sweet latte, made by adding vanilla syrup and caramel syrup to a latte base. Because caramel syrup is thick and light, many coffee shops use it with a etching needle to draw exquisite patterns, which made Caramel Macchiato sweep the world for a time and become a well-known coffee product.

But in fact, it has nothing to do with Macchiato. Macchiato is an espresso with a small amount of milk added, while Caramel Macchiato is a sweet latte with a large amount of syrup added; they are simply different coffees that use the same name with the same meaning. The "Macchiato" in Caramel Macchiato also takes the meaning of "branded," but because of the presence of caramel, its meaning is upgraded to "sweet brand." How sweet is it? Front Street Coffee believes a metaphor will let everyone imagine it directly: ‍‍

As sweet as Front Street Coffee!!

The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.