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Recently, more friends have been visiting Front Street stores to ask about Mocha coffee. Unfortunately, Mocha coffee has already been removed from Front Street's menu, so these friends have been met with disappointment one after another. "Since we can't buy it outside, let's roll up our sleeves and make it ourselves." Most friends, embracing this idea, went home and started making Mocha coffee.
Unexpectedly, the Mocha coffee they made didn't quite live up to their expectations—either the chocolate flavor wasn't strong enough, or it had flavor but was overly cloying. So they reached out to Front Street via the back office, hoping to get a recipe for making Mocha coffee.Today's Mocha coffee refers to an espresso-based milk coffee with chocolate added, using chocolate to mimic the rich chocolate flavor of the Mocha coffee originally from Yemen (for more details, please refer to this article "What Is Mocha Coffee?"). The vast majority of Mocha coffees are made with chocolate sauce, because chocolate sauce is convenient and quick—no need to wait for chocolate to melt before using it! But it's important to know that although chocolate sauce is very convenient, it is precisely the key reason most friends can't make a good Mocha coffee.
Because chocolate naturally has a very strong 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 palatable. But since the sugar and chocolate have already merged into one, we cannot separate them or adjust the ratio independently. This means that when the chocolate flavor isn't strong enough, if you choose to keep adding chocolate sauce, the chocolate flavor will increase, but the sweetness will also spike dramatically.So most businesses don't use only chocolate sauce to make Mocha coffee—they also add other "seasonings" to make the Mocha coffee both true to its essence (chocolate flavor) and easy to drink (not bitter). Many friends, being first-timers, don't realize the drawbacks of chocolate sauce, so they only use chocolate sauce when making Mocha coffee! 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 simply a chocolate-flavored espresso milk coffee. So what we need to do is very simple: give a milk coffee enough chocolate concentration (flavor), while keeping the sugar proportion from being too high—just enough to neutralize the bitterness!Likewise, we'll still use chocolate sauce to make Mocha coffee, because its sweetness blends more naturally with the chocolate, so it doesn't taste too jarring. But besides chocolate sauce, Front Street also uses another ingredient to increase the chocolate concentration, and that is: unsweetened cocoa powder.
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 add sweetness. Therefore, it's the perfect choice for boosting chocolate concentration (melted dark chocolate works too, of course, but it requires more steps and takes longer). Alright, enough talk—let's start making a delicious Mocha!How do you make a hot Mocha coffee?Since hot Mocha and iced Mocha differ slightly in preparation, Front Street will introduce them separately! To make a hot Mocha, the items and ingredients you need to prepare are: 1 coffee cup, 1 mixing cup/bowl (optional), 1 strainer (optional), 1 portion of milk, 1 portion of espresso, chocolate sauce, and cocoa powder.To make Mocha coffee, we recommend using Front Street Classic Espresso Blend. This is a recipe combining beans from three origins—Brazil, Indonesia, and Vietnam—and is dark roasted to maximize the coffee's rich aroma, allowing you to easily extract abundant and velvety crema that pairs beautifully with the chocolate aroma. You can purchase it at the Front Street Taobao store or the Front Street Tmall flagship store.
Step 1: Make the chocolate espresso baseFirst, let's make the chocolate espresso base! Add 15ml of chocolate sauce (Da Vinci brand) and 5g of unsweetened cocoa powder (Valrhona brand) to the mixing cup. After many tests at Front Street, the chocolate mixture made with this ratio not only has a suitable sweetness but also an extremely rich chocolate flavor! Of course, those with a sweet tooth 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 grounds, 28 seconds, yielding 38ml of liquid!)
Step 2: Filter out undissolved cocoa powderAfter 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 dissolved, because they clump together into larger chunks—filtering gives a smoother mouthfeel when drinking! (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 surfaceIf you have a sifter, you can use it to sprinkle some cocoa powder on the surface of this chocolate espresso base, which will give the finished Mocha coffee a more enticing chocolate aroma. (You can also skip this.)Just like making a hot latte, the milk for a 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 milk foam makes the texture more velvety. So in the milk steaming step, the process is completely identical to a latte! Steam to 60–68°C, thin microfoam.
The ratio of milk to coffee is 1:4, meaning 50ml of base should be paired with 200ml of milk.After steaming, we can start combining! If you want to do latte art, be aware that because this base is too thick, its initial fluidity is low, so we need to use more milk to combine and improve the surface fluidity—only then can you create beautiful latte art more easily! (Worth mentioning: Mocha is actually easier to pour art on than a latte.)
And with that, a delicious cup of Mocha coffee is complete! Not only does it offer a great visual experience, but it also tastes thoroughly enjoyable. The rich, sweet chocolate, paired with the whiskey aroma and butter cookie notes from the Warm Sun Blend—it's altogether like a liqueur chocolate, and because of the Red Cherry notes, there's a subtle berry aroma too. The layers are incredibly rich!!!
How do you make an iced Mocha coffee?For iced Mocha, since we need to use ice cubes to cool it down, we sacrifice some of the milk to make room. And when the ice cubes melt, they dilute the overall concentration, making the mouthfeel thinner. So for the chocolate base, we need to increase the amounts: raise the chocolate sauce from 15ml to 20ml, and the unsweetened cocoa powder from 5g to 8g. By increasing the chocolate concentration, we correct the mouthfeel!The process for making the chocolate coffee base is the same as for hot Mocha—the rest is just assembling the ingredients together! Add ice cubes (90g) and milk (160ml) to the prepared cup in order, and finally pour the chocolate coffee base over the top, and you're done!(You can also coat the glass with chocolate sauce first—for a glass cup, it looks more beautiful.)
Remember to stir before drinking to better blend the milk and chocolate coffee! If conditions allow, we can also add cream, milk foam, or other toppings on the surface to give the iced Mocha coffee more layers and double the deliciousness!
The above content is compiled by CoffeeHunters, a coffee news website.
