Now with the popularity of espresso, fancy coffee varieties are emerging one after another. Among them, on Front Street Coffee's espresso menu, latte and cappuccino are deeply loved by everyone, but today Front Street wants to introduce a relatively rare espresso drink—piccolo coffee, also known as piccolo latte.
You may have rarely heard of this piccolo coffee. Among them, "piccolo latte" in Italian "piccolo" means small, while "latte" means latte (that is, milk). And because "piccolo" in English also means "piccolo," the name piccolo latte coffee came about. Traditionalpiccolo coffeeis made with 15-20 milliliters of espresso added to steamed milk, and nowadays people generally prefer to pour the coffee into a 100-milliliter specialty glass to drink. Piccolo coffee mainly highlights the coffee's flavor and a better smooth mouthfeel.
How do you make a simple cup ofpiccolo coffee? Front Street will also give everyone a brief introduction. Piccolo latte is quite like a smaller version of latte coffee: the cup is small, the capacity is small, and the coffee and milk are also less than in common espresso drinks. You need to extract 15 to 20 grams of ristretto espresso, paired with 4 times the amount of milk.
Because Front Street Coffee does not offer piccolo latte, it does not have a dedicated 100-milliliter glass. Today's demonstration will use a 150-milliliter cup, extracting 30 grams of ristretto espresso and pairing it with 120 grams of milk, with a coffee-to-milk ratio of 1:4.
Among them, the coffee beans used by Front Street are Front Street's own blend—Sunflower·Warm Sun, blended from Honduras Sherry coffee and Yirgacheffe natural sun-dried Red Cherry in a 7:3 ratio. The espresso made from it carries a mellow cocoa aroma and a slight bright fruit acidity, as well as berry aromas and a whisky note, with a comfortable sweet aftertaste. Front Street uses 18 grams of coffee powder to make espresso, with an extraction time of 27 seconds, extracting a total of 30 grams of coffee liquid.
The parameters of the Italian espresso machine used to make espresso are very important, and everyone can adjust the parameters according to their own machine. So how does the resulting piccolo coffee taste? Because piccolo latte has a coffee-to-milk ratio of 1:4, the taste of espresso is very obvious when drinking it, and it better highlights the rum chocolate flavor of the Warm Sun blend. It tastes stronger than latte coffee, but it is not as hard to accept as espresso. In terms of milk foam, it is as smooth as latte coffee, neither as thin as flat white coffee nor as dense as cappuccino. The whole cup of coffee tastes like a milkshake, with obvious rum chocolate, rich, medium sweetness, and a moderate finish.
Earlier, a friend asked what the difference is between flat white coffee and piccolo coffee. Front Street will briefly explain flat white coffee for everyone. First is flat white coffee. From the previous text, we can know that flat white coffee is a coffee that highlights coffee flavor. Latte coffee is a coffee drink with a large amount of milk added, while cappuccino is a milk coffee with thicker milk foam. Flat white coffee is a coffee with a stronger coffee flavor, less milk, and thinner milk foam. The methods of making flat white coffee also differ. In terms of choosing the espresso base, New Zealanders like to use double ristretto to make flat white coffee, while Australian baristas prefer to use single espresso.
Front Street believes that flat white coffee feels more like a cup of coffee with milk; latte coffee is like a cup of coffee-flavored milk; cappuccino is like a cup of foamy coffee with dense milk foam. Flat white coffee can better showcase the quality of coffee beans than latte coffee and is more suitable for expressing the flavor of the coffee's own origin, just like the currently very popular SOE (single origin espresso), which caters to the characteristics of the third wave coffee trend that emphasizes coffee origins and tracing things back to their source.
Front Street believes that the most important thing in making a cup of piccolo coffee is choosing a good espresso as the base, because a good espresso is very important for making a cup of espresso coffee. Generally, espresso beans are blended from several kinds of coffee beans, so Front Street believes that choosing a suitable blended coffee bean is very important.
Blend beans can use different coffee beans to complement each other. If the coffee beans are well blended, the flavor of this blend will combine the advantages of those coffee beans, extracting a very balanced mouthfeel and an exceptionally aromatic, thick crema. But a poor blend will magnify the characteristics of the beans, especially lightly roasted beans, which will have a strong aroma and a stimulating sour and sweet taste. Front Street has found that many coffee shops like to use Yirgacheffe in blended coffee. The floral aroma extracted will be very obvious, and the taste will be somewhat more sour, very suitable for enthusiasts who like acidity.
Perhaps some customers do not understand why coffee beans should be blended. Isn't that a mess? Actually, it is not so. In Front Street's view, every kind of bean has its own advantages and disadvantages. Maybe the coffee liquid extracted from one bean through an espresso machine does not have enough crema, so you can add coffee beans rich in crema to complement it. If the espresso extracted from one bean is too sour, too bitter, or too sweet, then you can look for the complementary one to blend with it to achieve the desired coffee flavor. Isn't that perfect? A perfect blend bean makes it easier to create a perfect cup of piccolo coffee. So, if you like blending, you can often come to Front Street Coffee to exchange coffee experience.
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The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.
