How Do You Make Roman Espresso With a Coffee Machine?

Roman Espresso, popular in southwestern Italy, is espresso with lemon juice and granulated sugar added. Pull a normal shot from the machine, then stir in fresh lemon juice and sugar to taste. The acid cuts the harsh bitterness of dark-roasted coffee, while the sugar balances the sourness so the cup reads sweet-and-sour rather than sharp.

The drink grew out of hard times after the World Wars, when Italians could afford only low-quality dark roasts and looked for ways to soften the burnt bite. Campania's lemons made the fix easy. Today the same logic applies whether the shot comes from a pump machine or a moka pot: keep the espresso short and strong, add lemon gradually, and adjust sugar by taste.

The combination of lemon and espresso has a long history in southwestern Italy, where it is known as "Roman Espresso." This article will take you through the origins of this beverage and share its preparation method and parameter ratios in detail. From espresso extraction to the pairing of lemon juice and granulated sugar, every step matters. Using the Warm Sun Blend as an example, Front Street Coffee provides specific gram amounts and extraction recommendations to help you make a cup of lemon espresso with balanced sweet-and-sour notes, whisky-like aroma, and caramel sweetness.

But this flavor is merely our association. Yet in Italy, the homeland of the coffee machine, there is an espresso with lemon added! By directly adding lemon juice, we can genuinely taste the fresh fruity acidity of lemon in the coffee—it is Italy's "Roman Espresso"!

The Origins of Roman Espresso Ever since Italians invented the coffee machine and the moka pot, coffee has become a part of their daily lives. But at that time, Italy had just gone through an economic crisis and was bearing the negative effects of the World Wars, so out of necessity, they could only use low-quality dark-roasted coffee beans to make coffee. Harsh and bitterly burnt—these are the negative experiences that these low-quality dark-roasted beans bring. Many people could not accept such an intensely impactful flavor, so they began trying to add other substances to the coffee to neutralize its bitterness.

(This image is for reference only) We know that flavors influence and blend with each other. When one flavor is stronger than the others, it reduces the expression of the other flavors, making them auxiliary to itself. Therefore, sour, sweet, and salty are all capable of suppressing bitterness . It just so happened that the Campania region in southern Italy is abundant in lemons, and thus the practice of adding lemon to espresso was born. (This also led to the rumor that although Roman Espresso has "Roman" in its name, it was very likely not invented in Rome.) Although citric acid can reduce the harsh bitterness, the overly prominent sourness then became a thorny "troublemaker," so people thought of adding granulated sugar to neutralize it. Ultimately, besides lemon, granulated sugar is also a component of Roman Espresso. To this day, this espresso is still popular in southwestern Italy. Although the name may differ, the method is basically the same. So now let's take a look at how to make this cup of Roman Espresso! Roman Espresso " Espresso Romano " The ingredients we need to prepare are very simple: one shot of espresso, one piece of lemon, and 10g of granulated sugar~ For the espresso, as always, we just extract it with normal parameters! The extraction parameters are as follows: use 20g of Warm Sun Blend coffee beans, a coffee-to-liquid ratio of 1:2, and an extraction time of 30 seconds.

After extracting the espresso, pour it into a cup containing granulated sugar.

Then you can choose between two ways to add the lemon: one is to directly squeeze out the lemon juice; the other is to place a piece of lemon directly into the cup and let the warm espresso draw out the lemon juice.

The difference between the two lies in the amount of lemon juice—more or less. This can be chosen based on your coffee's roast level: the darker the roast, the more lemon juice you need (and the sugar should increase accordingly). The beans used by Front Street are the medium-dark roasted Warm Sun Blend, whose bitterness is not pronounced. So not much lemon juice is needed for neutralization—4ml is enough~ After making it, give the espresso a stir, mix everything evenly, and it's ready to drink~

This cup of Roman Espresso is really quite good when mixed properly. The bitterness of the espresso is suppressed by the sourness, and the sharp acidity is softened by the granulated sugar. The overall impression is a cup of sweet-and-sour espresso with flavor notes of whisky-like aroma, butter cookies, and caramel sweetness. Those who enjoy sour flavors can give it a try, but those who don't—well, just look on~

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