Occasionally, Front Street's store encounters customers who order "black coffee." Although Front Street knows that these customers most likely mean Americano when they say black coffee, to be safe, Front Street still asks to confirm. As a result, quite a few customers are puzzled: "Isn't black coffee just Americano?"Well now! That's not quite right. Many friends see bloggers online calling Americano black coffee, so they mistakenly believe that Americano and black coffee are the same thing. Although Americano can be called black coffee, black coffee is not necessarily Americano. Why does Front Street say this? First, we need to understand what black coffee is!So-called black coffee doesn't actually refer to a specific coffee, but rather a category—simply put, an umbrella term. It mainly refers to coffee made using only coffee beans and water as ingredients, without adding milk, sugar, or any other auxiliary ingredients besides water and coffee.In other words: if a cup of coffee contains only coffee and water, it can be black coffee. As for why it's called black coffee, Front Street believes it's not hard to imagine—it's because the color of the coffee is close to black.Undoubtedly, Americano is a member of the black coffee family. It is made by diluting espresso with water, and espresso is a highly concentrated coffee obtained by extracting coffee grounds with water. No other auxiliary ingredients are added throughout the process, so what is produced is a pure black coffee.However, as Front Street mentioned earlier, black coffee is an umbrella term for a category that includes Americano, but is not limited to Americano. So the relationship between them is one of inclusion, not equivalence. Americano can be black coffee, but black coffee is not necessarily Americano. That's why Front Street needs to specifically ask to confirm whether the black coffee the customer wants is Americano.Besides Americano, what other coffees belong to the black coffee category?To be fair, basically as long as we don't add any auxiliary ingredients other than coffee and water when making coffee, then any coffee you make with any brewing device is black coffee. For example, in the espresso system: espresso,Lungo, Ristretto, or Americano's sibling Long Black/Long Black—these espresso-plus-water or water-plus-espresso drinks all belong to the black coffee category.And beyond espresso-based coffee, things like pour-over coffee made by manually pouring water, siphon-brewedsiphon coffee, cold brew series including ice drip and cold steep coffee, or coffee made with household essentials like French press, moka pot, Clever Dripper, and other devices all belong to the black coffee category. Of course, the premise is that you haven't added any auxiliary ingredients other than water and coffee.There are many more examples besides these, and Front Street won't list them all. Now, seeing this, Front Street believes some friends will ask: since coffee with only water and coffee as ingredients is called black coffee, what is coffee with other auxiliary ingredients added called?Well, there are so many names! But generally speaking, we collectively call them flavored coffee, referring to coffee types made with various seasonings added. For example, coffee made with milk, sugar, chocolate, cream, alcohol, salt, and various other seasonings can all be called flavored coffee. Of course, water counts too, but it more refers to coffees that differ from the pure coffee format. Things like latte, cappuccino, flat white, con panna, mocha, macchiato, café au lait, and so on and so forth...Then within this category, depending on different preparation methods or different regions, they are divided differently. For example, some regions classify coffee by color—just like black coffee, coffee with milk added is calledwhite coffee(white coffee also refers to different coffees in different regions); or the recently popular style of coffee prepared like cocktails, which is calledspecialty crafted coffee......So, Front Street doesn't recommend using an umbrella term when ordering out. Because it covers too many coffee categories, without verification, it's very easy for differences in understanding to cause what the shop serves to differ from what you want, adding a lot of unnecessary trouble~ The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.
