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

Unexpectedly, the Mocha coffee they made didn't quite meet their expectations—either the chocolate flavor wasn't strong enough, or it had flavor but was overly sweet. So they contacted Front Street Coffee 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 the addition of chocolate to mimic 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—it can be used 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 a good Mocha coffee lies in it.

Because chocolate itself has a very rich bitterness, the more popular chocolate sauce products on the market all 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 cannot 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, the chocolate flavor will increase, but at the same time the sweetness will surge dramatically.

So most businesses don't use only 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 very easy to drink (not bitter). Many friends, because it's their first time trying, don't realize the drawbacks of chocolate sauce, so they only use chocolate sauce in making Mocha coffee! No worries—next, let Front Street Coffee 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 with sufficient chocolate concentration (flavor), while the proportion of sugar cannot be too high—just enough to neutralize the bitterness!

Likewise, we will still use chocolate sauce to make Mocha coffee, because its sweetness and chocolate blend more naturally, and it won't taste too jarring when drinking. But besides chocolate sauce, Front Street Coffee 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 because it contains no sugar, it doesn't add sweetness. Therefore, it is the unbeatable choice for increasing chocolate concentration (melted dark chocolate of course works too, but involves more steps and takes longer). Alright, without further ado, let's start making a delicious Mocha!

How do you make hot Mocha coffee?

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

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) into the mixing cup. Because after many tests by Front Street Coffee, the chocolate paste made with this ratio not only has suitable sweetness but also an extremely rich chocolate flavor! Of course, friends who like it sweet can slightly increase the chocolate sauce to 20ml.

Then we extract a portion 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. (The extraction parameters used by Front Street Coffee today are 19.8g of grounds, 28 seconds, extracting 38ml of liquid weight!)

Step 2: Filter out unmelted cocoa powder

After stirring is complete, we can pour it into the latte cup! When pouring, it's best to use a strainer to filter out the chocolate powder that hasn't fully melted, because they will clump together into larger lumps; after filtering, the drinking texture will be smoother! (This is also the reason for preparing 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 sifter, you can use it to sprinkle some cocoa powder on the surface of this chocolate espresso base, which will let the finished Mocha coffee give off a more tempting 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 will make the texture more velvety. Therefore, in the milk steaming step, the procedure 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: Combine

After steaming is done, we can start combining! Friends who want to do latte art should note that because this base is too thick, its initial fluidity is low. 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 pour art with than a latte.)

At this point, a delicious cup of Mocha coffee is complete! It not only has a great visual experience, but the taste is also very pleasant. The rich and sweet chocolate, paired with the whiskey aroma, butter cookie notes brought by the Warm Sun blend—the whole thing tastes like whiskey-filled chocolate, and because of the red cherry, there's a slight berry aroma. The layers are incredibly rich!!!

How do you make iced Mocha coffee?

For iced Mocha, since we need to use ice cubes to cool it down, we will sacrifice a portion of the milk to make room. And when the ice cubes melt, they will dilute the overall concentration, making the drinking texture relatively thin. So in the ingredients for the chocolate base, we need to increase them: raise the original 15ml of chocolate sauce to 20ml, and increase the unsweetened cocoa powder from the original 5g to 8g. By increasing the chocolate concentration, the texture is corrected!

The preparation process for the chocolate coffee base is the same as for hot Mocha; the rest is just combining the materials together! Add ice cubes (90g), milk (160ml) in order into the prepared cup, and finally pour the chocolate coffee base over the top—done!

(You can also first coat the wall with chocolate sauce; for a glass cup, it can look more aesthetically pleasing.)

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 ingredients on the surface to make the iced Mocha coffee more layered and double the deliciousness!

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