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- Welcome to another episode
in the Beginner's Guide to Coffee,
and today we're covering espresso-based drinks.
Now, that doesn't mean I'm gonna give you
an exact recipe for all of the 15 different drinks
that we're gonna cover.
That would take a really, really, really long time.
Instead, I'm gonna give you a little bit of a history,
the kind of idea behind the drink,
so that you know what to order,
what you might expect when you do,
and what you might want to make at home.
So, first on the list, let's talk about espresso.
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Espresso is now incredibly difficult to actually define.
It is basically a small, strong coffee
brewed under pressure, typically topped
with a red-brown foam called crema.
That seems a little wishy-washy,
but there's loads of different ways
to make espresso these days.
Now, the Italian National Espresso Institute,
which of course exists, and I'm very happy it does,
does have a very precise definition for Italian espresso,
and I'll show that to you here.
When you talk about espresso, especially online,
there's a bit of a confusion
between what is a single and what is a double,
because here we've got, say, seven grams of coffee
for a single espresso,
but often you'll see recipes
for 14, 18, 16, 20 grams of coffee.
That's because they're brewing
inside a double basket and not a single basket,
so they're basically brewing two shots of espresso,
a double espresso.
Now, you'll see Italian espresso
talks about milliliters in the cup,
that's a volume measurement,
whereas modern espresso talks about grams in the cup.
And if you have grams in the cup,
and how many grams of coffee that you used,
you have what are called ratios,
so the ratio between ground coffee and liquid coffee.
A traditional espresso is in the one-to-two,
to one-to-three range, right?
So that's how much liquid you typically produce
in around 25 to 30 seconds,
typically under, say, six to nine bars of pressure
at a brew temperature between 88
and probably 96, 97 degrees Celsius.
I don't want to be overly prescriptive about what it is,
because it can and should be lots of different things,
but that ratio will give you a pretty good idea
of what to expect from a traditional espresso.
And as I said, modern coffee shops typically serve you
a double espresso as standard.
Traditional coffee shops will typically serve you
a single espresso as standard.
Another quick note, if you're in Italy,
you'll probably notice that no one really orders
an espresso at the bar.
They say, un caffe, right?
They just say, a coffee.
That is the default way of brewing coffee in Italy,
so if you order a coffee, you get espresso.
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A common variation on an espresso is a ristretto.
That name means restricted, and the flow is restricted,
and the idea is from the same amount of ground coffee,
you get less liquid.
And that liquid will be more intense, thicker, oozier,
more kind of textured than a normal espresso.
The easy way to do that is just to cut the shot short
and let less liquid flow through the coffee.
The better way to do it is to grind a little finer
so the whole flow is slower,
and you're able to properly extract the coffee
using less water.
But in terms of ratios, a ristretto would be,
say, one-to-one, or, say, one-to-one-and-a-half.
That would be broadly speaking
the definition of a ristretto.
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Increasingly popular in modern coffee shops is the lungo.
It just means a long coffee.
Here, the ratio is much higher.
Typically, it's not just the case
of pushing more water through the same puck
that you would brew an espresso with.
Here, you'd be grinding coarser
and allowing a lot more liquid to flow
in a kind of similar brew time.
Here, the ratio might be, say, one-to-three,
up to one-to-five, one-to-six,
and that's kind of the limits,
really, of a traditional lungo.
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Next up is espresso con panna.
Now this is a drink more commonly seen outside of Italy
than inside of Italy.
It's not a traditional drink necessarily.
Here, it's just an espresso
topped with a little whipped cream or double cream.
It's also more commonly seen served with darker roasts,
where you'd want to buffer
a bit of that bitterness with the cream.
It's not typically served with lighter roasted,
more modern style specialty coffees.
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The macchiato is a complicated drink these days,
but it shouldn't be.
The name means marked or stained,
and I think its history most likely goes back
to a traditional espresso bar in Italy.
There, lots of coffees would be served.
You'd kind of order your drink,
pick up something that was served on the bar
sort of separately.
Here, if you wanted just a little bit
of milk in your espresso,
which is kind of what the drink is, then that would happen.
But, because of the crema on an espresso,
if you pour just a little milk into a drink,
you can't necessarily tell
which one has just a splash of milk in it.
So in order to tell which one was which,
the barista would grab that jug of milk,
grab a little teaspoon of foam,
and dot the one that had a little milk in it
with a dot of foam on top.
So that way, when you walked up to the bar,
you could see easily which one had a little milk in it.
This was how it was served for a long time,
until really latte art became incredibly popular.
And at that point,
a macchiato became an entirely different drink
because baristas wanted to flex a little bit
and pour nice-looking patterns in espresso cups,
because it's hard to do and it looks quite cool.
So the drink has more recently shifted,
and a modern macchiato is a kind of one-to-one
of espresso and milk,
steamed milk with a thin layer of foam on top.
However, we should mention the caramel macchiato,
which Starbucks has used to confuse almost everyone,
where you have a kind of latte
drizzled or marked with caramel,
and I think that has caused a great deal of confusion
over the last 10 or 15 years in many, many coffee shops.
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Espresso romano, Roman espresso, I guess,
is served very simply.
It is a shot of espresso with some lemon in some form.
Now, you see it served either as a twist of lemon
or as a little slice of lemon.
I would say with lighter, kind of modern specialty coffees,
I would avoid the lemon slice,
and I would go for a lemon twist
because you're adding quite a lot of acidity
to an already quite acidic beverage.
But with a darker roast, that little lemon slice
might contribute just a little lift in acidity
and be really quite pleasant.
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The cortado is another drink
that's gotten a little bit confusing.
It is historically speaking a Spanish or Portuguese drink.
It's most commonly seen there,
and it is a one-to-one of espresso and steamed milk.
These days, it's become a little bit
like the sort of macchiato in that it's a full cup,
so the barista can pour latte art,
and it can be anywhere from a one-to-one ratio
of coffee to milk, to a one-to-three, in some cases two.
This is definitely a drink where the modern specialty shop
and the traditional style one are quite a long way apart,
and there's a huge amount of variance
in the strength or size of drinks that you will receive,
especially in modern coffee shops.
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In a very similar vein is the Piccolo latte.
The name, despite being an Italian name,
probably doesn't originate in Italy itself.
It was probably Italianized outside of Italy
because it's not a drink you really ever see there.
It's a smaller latte.
Typically, it's a single shot of espresso,
and the ratio is one-to-two, to maybe one-to-three,
sometimes one-to-four.
It crosses over with the cortado
in many specialty coffee shops,
where one shop's cortado is identical
to another shop's Piccolo.
That can be a little bit confusing,
but that's roughly the idea behind it.
It's a small latte.
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The story you most often hear about the Americano
is that after World War Two,
American soldiers stationed in Italy
couldn't handle espresso,
and so had asked for it to be watered down a little bit
to be more like American coffee,
and thus was born the Americano.
It's probably not true.
Modern espresso wasn't really invented until 1948
and took a couple of years
to really gain popularity after that.
Ultimately, the idea is right, though.
This is a way of making espresso close
to American style filtered coffee in strength.
And to do that, you use hot water
to dilute down the espresso.
These days, that ratio will go
from anywhere from one-to-three, to one-to-four,
to one-to-five.
It's pretty open in that regard.
And typically a specialty shop
will put the hot water in the cup first
and pour the espresso on top.
The order you do them in
doesn't actually make any real difference.
It just looks much prettier to do water first
and then coffee on top.
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No, the long black is a little bit different to an Americano
because of the culture that it came from.
This is a drink that came out of Australia and New Zealand,
and as that culture spread,
as that style of espresso brewing spread,
they were brewing a lot of up-dosed,
so a lot of coffee in the portafilter,
ristretto-style espressos,
and that was being used in a long black.
So it's a little different from an Americano
because traditionally, typically,
it's a double ristretto on top of hot water.
It's a stronger, slightly more textured drink
than an Americano,
but often there's not all that much difference in it.
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The cappuccino is super interesting to me
because it has such an interesting history.
In fact, I made a whole video about this history,
but ultimately the drink predates espresso.
It goes all the way back to Vienna,
and it was called a kapuziner.
And here, you used coffee and milk and you mixed them
to the color of the Capuchin monks' robes.
That was how you described how milky, how strong,
you wanted your coffee.
Since then, it's changed a great deal,
and a modern cappuccino is defined in a couple of ways.
Firstly, it should be a relatively strong drink.
You might see a ratio of one-to-three,
to one-to-five in terms of espresso to milk,
and it should have a thick layer of foam on top.
Ideally, that foam should be micro foam,
where bubbles so small that you can barely see them,
and it's a delicious, lovely drink.
Now, there is the old rule of thirds for a cappuccino
that doesn't really make any sense,
that is one part espresso, one part steamed milk,
and one part milk foam.
Now, that means if you had a single shot
of Italian espresso at 25 mils,
then your single-shot cappuccino
would be a 75 mil drink, which it's not.
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So the caffe latte is interesting.
It's another drink that evolved I think outside of Italy,
despite having an Italian name.
You don't really see it very often in Italy.
Its history or its roots
might be something like the cafe au lait,
the French drink where you'd have quite strong coffee
and equal parts of that and hot milk,
often served in a bowl.
Dip a little pastry in there, very delicious.
But the caffe latte, the modern caffe latte,
is defined by being a relatively weak drink.
The ratio of milk to coffee is a little bit higher
and it will have some foam on the drink, but not a lot.
This means it's very popular for people
who like a sweeter, milkier thing,
and popular with baristas who can pour
really nice latte art into it.
Ratio wise, it will vary quite a lot.
It can go from, say, one-to-four,
up to one-to-six, in some cases.
Often it's served as a larger drink
with a double shot in the base.
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The history of the flat white is extremely contentious.
Those from Australia argue that it's Australian,
those from New Zealand would say it's from New Zealand.
It most likely originated as a kind of pushback
against the big, awful, dry, sea foamy cappuccino
of the 1990s.
People didn't want a cup that was mostly air.
They just wanted a flat, white coffee.
That was it.
Just give me not the big foamy thing, but a milky coffee.
And these days a flat white is very common,
especially in Europe, especially in the UK, actually,
in a lot of specialty shops.
It would be defined as a small, strong latte
in that it's typically a double shot drink
in say a five or six ounce cup, or 150 to 180 mil cup,
with the textured milk similar to a latte,
so a thin layer of foam on top.
Again, commonly poured with latte art
because you've got that really thin,
silky texture of milk that lets you pour
quite intricate, delicate patterns with it.
While it has been adopted
by some larger chain coffee companies,
if you see it in a specialty independent shop,
chances are there's a bit of an Antipodean influence there,
and you'll probably get pretty good coffee.
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Caffe corretto is a kind of great name for this drink.
It means a corrected coffee,
and it's corrected by adding some booze to it.
This is often served as an espresso
with a little booze on the side.
Sometimes the booze is in the coffee already,
but what I most commonly see, especially in Italy,
is that people will drink the espresso,
nearly finish it, and then throw in the booze,
swirl it around and sort of capture the last of the coffee
and mix it with the alcohol and drink it that way.
As for alcohol, most often it's seen with grappa,
sometimes sambuca, occasionally cognac
if someone's feeling fancy,
but those would be the main types of booze that you'd see
in a caffe corretto.
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Historically, the word mocha
kind of existed in around coffee
when it was referencing the Port of Mocha in Yemen.
Coffee from that part of the world
was often labeled as mocha,
and what became popular at one point in the industry
were mocha java blends,
theoretically blends of coffees from Yemen
with coffees from Java.
Now, this became a kind of stylistic thing,
a kind of idea rather than a traceability thing,
and people began to put other coffees
in their mocha java blends,
just to aim for that kind of chocolatey-er,
heavier taste profile.
How that connects to a hot chocolate
with some espresso in it, I don't really know,
but that seems to be the kind of rough source of the link.
As for the drink itself,
it really is pretty variable out there how it's done.
People might use sort of couverture,
sort of melted chocolate.
They might use a chocolate syrup.
There are no hard and fast rules.
You might even see powdered chocolate in there
in some cafes, too.
It is ultimately a hot chocolate
with a single or double shot of espresso,
but there's really very little in the way of rules
around what a mocha is.
In some cases, it might have some whipped cream on top.
Ultimately, you do you.
Now, there are a few slightly weirder drinks
that I just want to touch on quickly.
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So the red eye is really a drink
that I've only ever seen in North America,
and it obviously references someone being extremely tired
the same way you might take a red eye flight overnight
and, you know, arrive first thing in the morning
and feel pretty terrible
and need some coffee to pick you up.
It's basically a filtered coffee
with an espresso dropped in it,
just to give it some more strength and more caffeine.
Personally, I would separate the two and enjoy an espresso,
and then take my filtered coffee with me.
But, if you're in a hurry,
I guess just throw it all together, have some fun.
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Now, the breve latte is another kind of variation
that I typically only see in North America.
It refers to a caffe latte.
Instead of using milk, you're using half and half,
which if you're not familiar with it,
is half whole milk and half single cream,
so a notably higher fat content than whole milk.
That's basically it.
It's the same ratios as you'd aim for,
I guess the same texture,
though half and half won't foam identically to whole milk,
so you'll have a slight variance
in sort of foam texture there.
It is a milky, kind of fattier,
richer version of a caffe latte.
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Last up, I want to talk about the gibraltar.
Now, this is actually quite a popular drink,
but quite a confusing drink.
It originates most likely in San Francisco,
most likely in Blue Bottle.
It's a drink that's named after the name of the glass
made by a company called Libbey.
They make a particular glass called the Gibraltar glass,
and if you had coffee and milk in that,
it was a kind of one-to-two kind of ratio drink.
It was quite a strong milk drink
with a little bit of foam on top.
That was a gibraltar, and that's kind of gotten out,
and it's not always served in a Libbey-made Gibraltar glass,
but that's roughly the idea behind it.
This happens once in a blue moon,
where a cafe kind of names a drink
and it kind of leaks out into the rest of the world.
It's kind of interesting.
Ultimately, if you're ordering a gibraltar somewhere else,
you're really probably ordering a Piccolo latte
or a cortado in some places, too.
It's really within that kind of family of drinks,
but it did seem worth mentioning in this video.
But now I really wanna hear from you
down in the comments below.
Did I miss a drink out?
I know I didn't put the affogato in,
but that's because it's really a dessert, not a drink.
Maybe there's a definition that you disagree with.
I'd love to hear from you.
Leave me a comment, let me know your thoughts.
But for now, I'll say thank you so much for watching
and I hope you have a great day.