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Recently, more and more friends have been visiting Front Street stores to ask about Mocha coffee. Unfortunately, Mocha coffee has been removed from Front Street's menu, so these friends all hit a dead end. "Since we can't buy it outside, let's make it ourselves and be self-sufficient." Most friends took this idea and went home to make Mocha coffee.

Unexpectedly, the Mocha coffee they made didn't quite match their expectations—either the chocolate flavor wasn't strong enough, or it had flavor but was too cloyingly sweet. So they contacted Front Street through the backend, wanting a secret recipe for making Mocha coffee.

Today's Mocha coffee refers to an espresso milk coffee with chocolate added, using chocolate to imitate the Mocha coffee that originates from Yemen and has a rich chocolate flavor (for details, please refer to this article "What is Mocha Coffee?"). The vast majority of Mocha coffees use chocolate sauce in their preparation, because chocolate sauce is convenient and quick—you can use it directly without waiting for chocolate to melt! What you need to know is that although chocolate sauce is very convenient, the key reason most friends can't make good Mocha coffee lies in it.

Because chocolate itself has a very rich bitterness, the more popular chocolate sauce products on the market add a large amount of sugar during production to neutralize the bitterness and make it more acceptable. But since the sugar and chocolate have already merged into one, we can't separate them or adjust the ratio independently. This leads to the situation where, when the chocolate flavor isn't strong enough, if you choose to keep adding chocolate sauce, although the chocolate flavor will increase, the sweetness will also skyrocket.

So most businesses don't just use chocolate sauce to make Mocha coffee; they also add other "seasonings" to make the Mocha coffee not lose its essence (chocolate flavor) while still being easy to drink (not bitter). Many friends, because it's their first time, don't realize the drawbacks of chocolate sauce, so in making Mocha coffee, they only use chocolate sauce! No worries—next, let Front Street share how to make a delicious cup of Mocha coffee!

How should a delicious Mocha coffee be made?

As mentioned earlier, Mocha coffee is just a chocolate-flavored espresso milk coffee. So what we need to do is very simple: make a milk coffee have enough chocolate concentration (flavor), while the sugar proportion shouldn't be too high—just enough to neutralize the bitterness!

Similarly, we'll still use chocolate sauce to make Mocha coffee, because its sweetness and chocolate blend more naturally, and it won't taste too jarring. But besides chocolate sauce, Front Street will also use other materials to increase the chocolate concentration, namely: unsweetened cocoa powder.

The presence of unsweetened cocoa powder not only brings a richer flavor to the coffee but also greatly enhances the body, and since it contains no sugar, it doesn't increase sweetness. Therefore, it's the best choice for boosting chocolate concentration (melted dark chocolate works too, of course, but it involves more steps and takes longer). Alright, without further ado, let's start making a delicious Mocha!

How to make hot Mocha coffee?

Since hot Mocha and iced Mocha differ slightly in preparation, Front Street will introduce them separately! To make hot Mocha, the items and materials needed are: 1 coffee cup, 1 mixing cup/bowl (optional), 1 strainer (optional), 1 portion of milk, 1 portion of espresso, chocolate sauce, cocoa powder.

To make Mocha coffee, it's recommended to use Front Street Classic Espresso Blend, a recipe combining beans from Brazil, Indonesia, and Vietnam, using a dark roast, which maximizes the coffee's rich aroma and allows you to easily extract abundant and creamy crema, complementing the chocolate aroma perfectly. You can purchase it at Front Street's Taobao store or Front Street Tmall flagship store.

Step 1: Make the chocolate espresso base

First, let's make the chocolate espresso base! Add 15ml of chocolate sauce (DaVinci brand) and 5g of unsweetened cocoa powder (Valrhona brand) to the mixing cup. After multiple tests by Front Street, the chocolate mixture made with this ratio not only has suitable sweetness but also an extremely rich chocolate flavor! Of course, those who like it sweeter can slightly increase the chocolate sauce to 20ml.

Then we extract a shot of espresso into the mixing cup, using the heat of the espresso along with stirring to melt and blend the chocolate sauce and cocoa powder. (Today Front Street used extraction parameters of 19.8g of coffee grounds, 28 seconds, yielding 38ml of liquid!)

Step 2: Filter out unmelted cocoa powder

After stirring, we can pour it into the latte cup! When pouring, it's best to use a strainer to filter out any chocolate powder that hasn't fully melted, because they clump together into larger pieces, and filtering will make the drink smoother! (This is also why you need two cups—if you don't plan to filter, you can just make it directly in the latte cup.)

(Universal portafilter basket)

Step 3: Sprinkle a small amount of cocoa powder on the surface

If you have a sieve, you can use it to sprinkle some cocoa powder on the surface of this chocolate espresso base, which will make the finished Mocha coffee emit a more enticing chocolate aroma. (You can also skip this.)

Step 4: Steam the milk

Just like making a hot latte, the milk for hot Mocha also needs to be steamed to a high temperature of 65°C to activate the sweetness of lactose. At the same time, the presence of milk foam makes the texture smoother. Therefore, in the milk steaming step, the process is completely identical to a latte! Steam to 60–68°C, thin milk foam.

The ratio of milk to coffee is 1:4, meaning 50ml of base should be paired with 200ml of milk.

Step 5: Pour and combine

After steaming, we can start combining! If you want to do latte art, note that because this base is too thick, the initial flow isn't very fluid, so we need to use more milk to combine and improve the fluidity of the surface, so we can better create beautiful latte art~ (It's worth mentioning that Mocha is actually easier to make art with than a latte.)

And with that, a delicious cup of Mocha coffee is complete! Not only does it have a great visual experience, but it also tastes very pleasant. Rich and sweet chocolate, paired with the whiskey aroma, butter cookie notes from the Warm Sun Blend—it's altogether the taste of whiskey-filled chocolate, and because of the red cherry notes, there's a slight berry aroma, with very rich layers!!!

How to make iced Mocha coffee?

For iced Mocha, since we need to use ice cubes to cool it down, we sacrifice some milk to make room. And when the ice cubes melt, they dilute the overall concentration, making the taste thinner, so in the chocolate base ingredients, we need to increase them: raise the original 15ml of chocolate sauce to 20ml, and the unsweetened cocoa powder from the original 5g to 8g, by increasing the chocolate concentration to correct the texture!

The process for making the chocolate coffee base is the same as for hot Mocha; the rest is just combining the materials together! Into the prepared cup, add ice cubes (90g), milk (160ml) in order, and finally pour over the chocolate coffee base—and you're done!

(You can also drizzle chocolate sauce on the walls first; for a glass cup, it looks even more beautiful.)

Remember to stir before drinking, so the milk and chocolate coffee blend better! If conditions allow, we can also add cream, milk cap, and other toppings on the surface to make the iced Mocha coffee even more layered and doubly delicious!

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