You often hear people say, "To judge whether an espresso tastes good, just look at the crema. The best espresso has a crema that is fine, thick, and golden." But can you really judge whether an espresso tastes good by the state of its crema? To find out whether this method works, Front Street only needs to give everyone two questions. [more…]

As a well-known beverage in the coffee world, Americano—made with just espresso and water (or iced water)—can be found in almost every café and is a must-order star item. People love Americano for many reasons: it could be for a caffeine boost, to quench thirst, to cool down, or perhaps to satisfy [more…]

Black coffee is simply coffee with no sugar, milk, or other additives. The Americano, pour-over coffee, and black coffee made from freeze-dried powder that we commonly see are all types of black coffee. Today Front Street Coffee will talk about the most popular type of black coffee: the Americano. Where does the Americano come from? The ingredients for an Americano are very simple, [more…]

Front Street Coffee believes that coffee itself is not high in calories, and Americano does indeed have weight-loss benefits. But if you're in the habit of adding sugar and milk to your coffee, or even going all out with cream, alcohol, and other fancy additions... then the calorie count is no simple matter! For example, com- [more…]

If you want to learn how to brew coffee, you must first learn how to drink coffee. Of course, "learning to drink coffee" here does not mean being able to describe gorgeous flavor notes; it is more about being able to judge whether a cup of coffee is good or bad—that is, whether it tastes good or not. Whether a coffee tastes good or not, subjectively and objectively, depends to a fairly large extent on personal preference. [more…]

Espresso is mostly made with blended beans, because espresso made from typical single-origin coffee beans may taste less mellow and have a sharp acidity—even with milk or sugar added, it will still taste sour. In addition, because coffee beans are an agricultural product, they will more or less vary from year to year, so the coffee produced [more…]

For more specialty coffee knowledge, please follow: Front Street Coffee (Frontsteet Coffee). Friends who are interested in coffee may all do this when choosing coffee: they start from coffee brand rankings, believing that a high-ranking brand must be good coffee. Actually, that is not the case. [more…]

One of the defining features of Front Street's shops is the wide selection of beans available for pour-over coffee. Although not every bean sold on Taobao and Tmall has been brought into the physical stores, a rough count still puts the number at over thirty—so the choices can be considered quite abundant. And even though the bean selection runs to more than thirty options, [more…]

Espresso, which many people also like to call "Espresso," or "Italian-style espresso," or "concentrated coffee." A good espresso will add a good coffee flavor to Italian coffee. If you drink espresso on its own, the taste will be very strong, but there are also quite a few people who just like it [more…]

A proper espresso will have a delicate golden-brown foam floating on its surface, which Italians call Crema. It is the hallmark of espresso, yet it is often mistaken as the sole criterion for judging whether a coffee is good or bad. What exactly this layer of foam is and how it forms are worth discussing carefully. What is Crema? [more…]

Today a friend was discussing a very interesting question: how to brew "wine-red" coffee. That's right—the wine-red refers to the color of the coffee liquid, because the friend who brought up this topic found that wine-red coffee seems to taste better than coffee of other colors, so they started this discussion. [more…]

Many people buy a home espresso machine with one first goal in mind: pulling a thick, creamy crema like the one in coffee shops. But after endlessly tweaking grind size, dose, and water temperature, the crema is still thin. The problem usually isn't the machine — it's the beans. Crema is the layer of foam formed when carbon dioxide and fats emulsify during espresso extraction. [more…]

For more specialty coffee knowledge, please follow the WeChat official account: Front Street Coffee (FrontStreet Coffee). What is SOE coffee? SOE is the abbreviation of Single Origin Espresso, which means single-origin espresso. Its focus is to highlight [more…]

Blooming is a crucial step in coffee brewing. To get straight to the point, blooming plays a vital role in determining whether the brewed coffee tastes good or not. The blooming process can even indicate whether the cup of coffee will be enjoyable, and a proper bloom can even enhance the flavor and mouthfeel of the coffee. Blooming is the starting point of brewing a pour-over coffee; if this step goes wrong, the subsequent... [more…]

Cost-effective and great-tasting coffee beans are best approached by gradually building your judgment through tasting experience. When buying beans for everyday use, you need to consider how quickly you'll drink them, how much to buy at once, and whether you'll mainly make black coffee or milk coffee at home. The flavor words on the packaging can offer clues, but they can't replace the actual drinking experience—whether the acidity is gentle, whether the sweetness lingers, and whether the [more…]

How much coffee powder does an espresso need - How to drink espresso powder: How much coffee liquid is extracted from 20g of powder? When brewing coffee, we all know that the coarseness of the grind is very important. If you're not careful and the grind isn't right or is uneven, the coffee can easily be under-extracted or over-extracted. Compared with pour-over, cold brew, and other methods, espresso [more…]

Mainstream Third Wave Specialty Coffee Nowadays, cafes often emphasize that they serve "specialty coffee." What exactly is "specialty coffee"? Why is it that among the home-roasting businesses blooming like wildflowers, over ninety percent choose the so-called light-to-medium roast to interpret the flavors of green coffee beans? Just pay a little attention to coffee-related articles. [more…]

The world of specialty coffee is fascinating, and each country's coffee has its own character. Depending on the region, variety, processing method, and intended use, it can display completely different styles and tones. Whether you want to open a café or brew at home, you can't skip the first step: buying coffee beans. For home coffee [more…]

The balance of acidity and sweetness is not determined solely by a bean's origin or flavor description—the state of the coffee beans after they leave the roaster matters just as much. Freshly roasted beans continue to release carbon dioxide, their aroma has not yet stabilized, and the cup may taste sharp, astringent, or disjointed; only after resting to the right stage do the acidity, sweetness, and aftertaste more readily come together into [more…]

If you want to drink coffee with nutty, cocoa-like notes, the roast level often helps you judge what's in the cup more than the name of the region does. When the roast is lighter, the bean's acidity, sweetness, and aroma are preserved more noticeably; at a medium roast, aromas such as peanut, almond, and milk chocolate unfold more easily; medium-dark to dark roasts add caramel, dark chocolate, and roa [more…]