Walk into any café and the espresso menu is dazzling: espresso, Americano, cappuccino, latte, mocha, macchiato, flat white, dirty coffee… Each has its own flavor, and each has its own story. Many people have drunk them but may not know how they were born, how they were named, or how they should be made. From the perspective of Front Street Coffee, this article sorts out the origins and recipes of these common espresso drinks one by one, to help you better appreciate the beauty of each cup when you drink it.

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A café menu never lacks choices. In the espresso category alone, dozens of drinks with different names can be listed. Many friends already know from actually tasting them which flavor they like, but when it comes to the origins of these coffees, most people probably still are not very clear. So today, Front Street will talk about those espresso drinks that often appear on menus: how each came to be, how its name came about, and specifically how to make it.

Espresso "Espresso"

Espresso is the first cup we need to understand, because it is the foundation of all espresso drinks. Without it, familiar drinks like latte, Americano, and flat white could not be made at all.

Espresso means "fast" in Italian. Before the twentieth century, making a cup of coffee took quite a long time. If you wanted coffee to wake yourself up, you first had to endure a long wait.

Obviously, some people could not wait. So in the early twentieth century, the wave of the European Industrial Revolution gave rise to the espresso machine. For the first time, people discovered that coffee could be made so quickly. Of course, the coffee machines of that time were far from comparable to today's equipment in terms of precision and extraction pressure, but in that era, their speed was already as fast as a cheetah. Therefore, people named this quickly made cup of coffee Espresso, taking the meaning of "very fast."

After the coffee machine appeared, espresso quickly became popular, and cafés opened one after another across Italy for people to enjoy it. The method for making espresso is actually not complicated: simply extract twice the liquid weight within the specified time according to the dose recommended for the basket. For example, the recommended dose for Front Street's basket is 20g, so that means using 20g of coffee grounds and extracting 40ml of coffee liquid between 28 and 35 seconds.

Americano "Americano"

The story goes back to World War II, when an American soldier walked into a café in Italy to drink coffee. Unexpectedly, the espresso served was too strong, completely different in strength from the instant coffee they usually drank, and really hard to accept.

So they had no choice but to ask the café to pour the espresso into water to dilute it. The diluted coffee was very popular among American soldiers, much better than instant coffee. Gradually, more and more American soldiers asked for espresso with water. To make ordering easier, the café called this water-diluted espresso "Americano."

Americano only needs espresso and water, mixed in a 1:4 ratio. For example, Front Street's method is to use 40ml of espresso and add 160ml of hot water at 70°C.

Cappuccino "Cappuccino"

Cappuccino and latte both belong to the category of milk coffee made with espresso plus milk, but because latte is so famous, many people mistakenly think that latte was born first and cappuccino appeared later. The fact is exactly the opposite: cappuccino was the one that appeared first.

Cappuccino comes from a direct translation of the Italian word "Cappuccino," whose original meaning is "hood." When people first added steamed milk to coffee, they found that the color after mixing was very close to the color of the robes of the Franciscan order, and the milk foam bulging on the surface of the coffee looked like the hood of the robe. So this cup of coffee with steamed milk added was given the name "Cappuccino."

The method for making cappuccino is not difficult either. The ratio of coffee to milk is 1:4. First use 40ml of espresso as the base, then steam 160ml of steamed milk with thick milk foam, and then integrate and pour latte art.

Latte "Latte"

Latte can be said to be the most popular milk coffee, bar none. Latte in Italian simply means milk. Because the amount of milk added is very large, Italians called this coffee with a large amount of milk added "Coffee Latte."

However, people outside Italy, for convenience, directly abbreviated it to "Latte," and the name latte has been passed down to this day. But you should know that if you want to order a latte in an Italian café and directly say "Latte," the probability of finally receiving a cup of plain milk is very high.

The method for making a latte is even simpler. Front Street uses 40ml of espresso, then pours in 200ml of steamed milk at 65°C with relatively thin milk foam.

Mocha "Mocha Cafe"

Originally, mocha referred to the port city of Mocha in Yemen. For more than three hundred years starting in the seventeenth century, the port of Mocha was an important stronghold of the coffee trade, and almost all the world's coffee circulated through here. To prove that the beans were legitimate coffee beans shipped from the port of Mocha, every bag of beans exported was printed with the word "Mocha" to indicate its source.

But later, coffee began to be grown all over the world, and the port of Mocha gradually lost its dominant position in the coffee trade. In addition, under the rule of the Ottoman Empire, coffee beans produced in Mocha became scarce, and people could no longer easily drink Mocha coffee. To relive the taste in their memory, people used chocolate to imitate the chocolate notes of Mocha coffee, and thus "Mocha coffee" was born.

Front Street's parameters for making a mocha are: 40ml espresso, 10g chocolate sauce, 190ml steamed milk at 65°C with relatively thin milk foam.

Macchiato "Macchiato"

"Macchiato" means "mark." Before the concept of specialty coffee appeared, coffee did not taste as good as it does now. Many people found it unbearably bitter after drinking it, so they asked to add a little milk to the coffee to neutralize the bitterness.

But after adding just a little milk, the appearance did not change much, and baristas found it hard to tell whether this espresso had milk added or not. To prevent confusion, baristas would cover the surface of this espresso with a little milk by adding a thin layer of milk foam, using the foam as a mark. Macchiato got its name because of this.

Macchiato is also very simple to make: first extract a shot of espresso, then add a little milk, and finally top it with a portion of milk foam. Front Street's production parameters are 40ml espresso, 10ml hot milk at 65°C, plus a portion of milk foam as garnish.

However, as coffee gradually became more specialty-oriented, the taste of coffee was no longer "bitter all the way through." High-quality coffee used "aroma, sweetness, and richness" to overcome bitterness. As a result, people no longer needed to add milk to neutralize bitterness, and macchiato gradually faded from view.

Caramel Macchiato "Caramel Macchiato"

Many years later, a coffee called "Caramel Macchiato" appeared on the market. But it is not a derivative of macchiato; it is a completely new flavored coffee. Its method is to build on a latte by adding caramel, vanilla syrup, and other ingredients. So it only borrows the implication of macchiato, while the method is completely different. After adding various syrups, the whole cup of coffee is very sweet, and its meaning also changed to "sweet mark" (caramel macchiato).

Caramel macchiato is slightly harder to make. Front Street will explain it in detail here: first use 10ml of vanilla syrup as the base, then pour in 180ml of steamed milk at 65°C with relatively thick milk foam, pour 40ml of espresso into the center of the cup, and finally drizzle caramel syrup on the surface as garnish.

Flat white "Flat white"

Australians prefer coffee on the strong side, but traditional Italian coffee dilutes the strength too much and obviously cannot satisfy their "heavy taste" needs. So they developed their own strong coffee products. For example, the "Long Black" that Front Street often shares is the stronger version of Americano; and the "Flat white" is the stronger version of milk coffee.

Although traditional Italian coffee already had strong milk coffees like cappuccino, for Australians, the overly thick and dense milk foam was not the mouthfeel they wanted. So, after increasing the strength and flattening the milk foam, "Flat white" was born.

The making of a flat white follows the traditional Italian method: 40ml espresso, paired with 160ml steamed milk at 65°C with relatively thin milk foam.

Dirty

Dirty can be said to be the only coffee in this article that was born as an iced drink. It comes from Mr. Katsuyuki Tanaka of Japan. According to Mr. Tanaka's introduction in his own book, the core of Dirty coffee lies in the combination of cold milk and hot espresso. Cold milk has an obvious sweetness, and paired with the extremely mellow mouthfeel and rich coffee flavor of hot espresso, although the contrast between the two is great, it is not jarring.

When the cold milk fully catches the hot espresso, the espresso gradually falling looks like the tear marks shed by an angel. So Mr. Tanaka named it "Angle Stain" (Angel's Tears). After spreading to China, it gradually evolved into "Dirty" (dirty coffee).

To make dirty coffee, note that you should prepare 200ml of cold milk before extracting the espresso. Then, while extracting the espresso, place the container holding the cold milk under the espresso outlet and wait to catch the espresso. After the 40ml espresso has finished extracting, move the cup away, and you can enjoy the delicious Dirty coffee.

The above are several of the more common espresso drinks on café menus. Once we know them and understand their origins, when we drink them again, we can better feel the wonderful qualities of each cup.

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