With the development of the times, coffee has also continuously progressed. Having experienced two waves of coffee, although we are in the midst of the third wave of specialty coffee, espresso remains important. Espresso-making skills are a must-have for every barista, and almost every café serves espresso. What Front Street often refers to as espresso is a series of coffee drinks made with espresso as the base. Today, let Front Street share how to make Americano.

Americano can be said to be the simplest espresso drink, because Americano consists of only two parts: espresso and water, while iced Americano adds ice cubes. The simplest part is also the part that most tests skill. Americano is often the espresso drink that best tests a barista's espresso extraction technique.

Compared with milk coffees such as latte, Americano, because it lacks milk's influence on the coffee's flavor, is the best way to perceive the taste of the coffee beans themselves. Many barista friends choose Americano when they go to other cafés: first, because it is convenient and quick; second, because it lets them know the standard of the drinks being served. Back to the point, we just said that making Americano is simple, with only water and espresso as its two parts, so you only need to pour the espresso into the water.

The espresso part needs to be extracted according to the characteristics of the beans; different beans have different extraction parameters. Every day, baristas must adjust according to the condition of the beans, ultimately arriving at parameters compatible with different categories such as espresso, Americano, and latte, so that these coffees can perform at their best.

Taking the Sunflower Warm Sun blend coffee beans used by Front Street as an example, based on Front Street's serving experience, this coffee bean has the best flavor after 12-14 days of resting. The espresso extraction plan used by Front Street is to extract 40 grams of espresso liquid from 20 grams of coffee grounds, in 30 seconds.

When making hot Americano, Front Street will preheat the cup with hot water, then pour in hot water, and finally pour in the extracted espresso. The ratio for Americano is generally between 1:6 and 1:8, and after multiple adjustments, FrontStreet Coffee chose a ratio of 1:6, that is, 40 grams of coffee liquid mixed with 240 grams of hot water.

Similarly, when making iced Americano, pre-cool the cup with ice cubes, then pour in water, and finally pour in the espresso. Because ice cubes need to be added, FrontStreet Coffee's iced Americano uses a ratio of 1:7, with 40 grams of coffee liquid mixed with 280 grams of ice-water mixture, of which 180 grams are ice cubes and 100 grams are water.

Does removing the crema make it taste better?

When making hot Americano, you will notice a layer of foam floating on the surface of the coffee. That is what we often call coffee crema. This part of the crema comes from the crema produced when making espresso. We know that the three parts of espresso are the core, the body, and the crema. The crema of espresso comes from carbon dioxide being dissolved into the liquid under the high pressure of the coffee machine when coffee grounds are used. Then, when extraction ends and the pressure returns to normal, the carbon dioxide in the coffee liquid begins to return to the air, and at the same time meets the fats in the coffee and is wrapped by them. This is the reason crema is produced.

What if we scrape off the crema? FrontStreet Coffee tried making two cups of Americano, one of which had the crema scraped off as a control group. For FrontStreet Coffee's store's Warm Sun blend coffee beans, the cup with the crema scraped off was cleaner and had a smoother mouthfeel, while the cup with the crema retained had a slightly thicker mouthfeel. Both cups had obvious dark chocolate and slight whisky oak barrel aromas, with soft acidity, and the difference was actually not big. If you like a clean flavor, scraping off the crema is recommended; if you need continuous serving, keeping the crema is more recommended.

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