Front Street Coffee (FrontStreet Coffee) barista: "Hello! What coffee would you like today? Espresso or pour-over?"

Customer: "I'd like an espresso... I'd like to ask, what's the difference between espresso andAmericano?" 

I believe everyone who goes to a café has seen the barista grind coffee beans into a bowl with a handle, then click it onto the espresso machine to start extraction~ Coming from the same machine and both being black coffee, why do we still distinguish between espresso and Americano? This takes us back to the origins of espresso~

 What isespresso?

Espresso first appeared during Italy's industrial era. Because brewing coffee took a long time, busy people urgently needed to drink a highly concentrated, high-caffeine coffee during their brief breaks to refresh themselves. So cafés began using manual pressure to force a small amount of water quickly through the coffee grounds to extract an extremely concentrated coffee liquid. This produced about 30ml of coffee liquid. Coupled with the fact that people at the time had no pursuit of coffee bean quality, many coffee beans were strongly flavored and rich, with relatively high caffeine content. After drinking it in two or three sips and resting a while, people could perk up and continue working.

Today, espresso is no longer simply used for refreshment~ With the popularity of specialty coffee beans, people have begun to pay attention to coffee's flavor. Even espresso must be strong without being bitter, bitter without being burnt, able to stimulate the taste buds while not bringing unpleasant sensations to the mouth~

Taking Front Street Coffee (FrontStreet Coffee)'s espresso offerings as an example, Front Street uses a warm sun espresso blend of sun-dried red cherry from Ethiopia blended with Honduras sherry barrel beans. Through 9 bar of pressure and 92°C water temperature, 20g of coffee grounds are extracted into 40g of espresso liquid, with an extraction time of 25-30 seconds~ The flavor profile of the espresso extracted this way is: whisky aroma, strawberry sweetness and acidity, vanilla cream smoothness, and a hazelnut chocolate finish~ But if you taste the espresso directly right away, you may be put off by its intensity. Some people who aren't used to it will add water to dilute it, and the coffee that results is what we know well as "Americano."

What isAmericano?

The reason Americano is called Americano is that when American soldiers went to Italy at the time, they found the local espresso hard to swallow, so they asked for clean water and poured it into the espresso. Later they discovered that coffee made this way had the mellow richness of brewed coffee, while also greatly reducing preparation time. After the soldiers returned to the United States, they brought this coffee extraction machine and technique back with them. At the same time, after naming this water-diluted espresso "Americano," more and more people came to like this quickly made black coffee, and just like that it became America's national coffee~

As the old saying goes, with the promotion of specialty coffee, when espresso's flavor improves, Americano improves along with it~ People hope Americano can also have layers of flavor, so there is now a clear reference ratio for how much water to add to espresso~ TraditionalAmericano dilution ratio is 1:8, which is suitable for the espresso extracted from most espresso blend coffee beans~ But if it is a fresher/clearer-tasting espresso, you need to adjust the ratio yourself~

Taking Front Street Coffee (FrontStreet Coffee)'s Warm Sun espresso blend as an example, in order to better express the whisky aroma and soft acidity, it is diluted at a ratio of 1:4-1:5. The extraction is also slightly adjusted, because if 20g is directly extracted into 40ml of coffee liquid within 25-30 seconds, after dilution with clean water, some unpleasant flavor may become prominent. So to avoid a bitter taste in the Americano, Front Street extracts less of the tail end for the espresso used in Americano, that is, 20g of grounds extracted into 35g of coffee, then mixed with clean water at 1:4.5. The flavor profile of the resulting Americano is: whisky aroma, berry acidity, and a vanilla hazelnut chocolate finish~

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