The two get mixed up because both are small espresso drinks with a little milk, and cafés don't always agree on what either word means. The short version: a macchiato is espresso with a spoonful of foam, and a cortado is espresso with about as much warm milk as coffee. One is marked. The other is cut. What Macchiato Means Macchiato is Italian for stained or marked. A … [Read more...] about Cortado vs Macchiato: A Dab of Foam Against an Equal Measure of Milk
Espresso
How to Make a Cortado at Home: A Double Shot and Barely Foamed Milk
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. Of all the espresso drinks with milk, the cortado is one of the easiest to get right at home, because the hardest part of milk drinks, the foam, barely matters. If your machine can pull a decent double shot and warm a small jug of milk, you can make one as good as a café's. What You Need An espresso machine with a steam … [Read more...] about How to Make a Cortado at Home: A Double Shot and Barely Foamed Milk
Naples’ Caffè Sospeso: The Coffee You Pay For and Leave Behind for a Stranger
In some Naples bars, a customer will pay for two coffees and drink one. The second is a caffè sospeso, a suspended coffee. It waits on the bar's tab until someone who can't afford a coffee comes in and asks whether there's a sospeso. If there is, they get it free. Nobody knows who paid, and nobody asks. Where It Comes From The custom grew up in the working-class cafés of … [Read more...] about Naples’ Caffè Sospeso: The Coffee You Pay For and Leave Behind for a Stranger
Light vs Dark Roast: How Roasting Changes the Bean, and Which Roast Suits Milk Drinks
At a market stall that sells coffee by weight, two baskets sit side by side under handwritten signs: Colombia Light and Colombia Dark. The beans came from the same country, maybe from the same farm. The only difference is how long they spent in a roaster, and that's enough to make them taste like two different coffees. Roasting turns green coffee, which smells grassy and makes … [Read more...] about Light vs Dark Roast: How Roasting Changes the Bean, and Which Roast Suits Milk Drinks
Espresso Scales: Why a Drip-Tray-Sized Scale With Auto-Start Beats a Kitchen Scale
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. If you only buy one accessory after the grinder, make it a scale. Espresso recipes are written in grams. A typical double is 18 g of ground coffee in and about 36 g of liquid out, a 1:2 ratio, in roughly 25 to 30 seconds. Without a scale you're guessing at two of those three numbers. Why not just watch the volume in the … [Read more...] about Espresso Scales: Why a Drip-Tray-Sized Scale With Auto-Start Beats a Kitchen Scale
How to Order Coffee in France: Café, Noisette, Crème and Allongé
Ask for un café in France and you'll get an espresso, short and dark in a thick little cup, with a sugar cube or two on the saucer. Nobody asks what size you want. Anything else needs its own word, and the words aren't the ones that work in Madrid or Lisbon. If you drink cortados, the one to learn is noisette. It's the nearest thing France has to a cortado, with less milk than … [Read more...] about How to Order Coffee in France: Café, Noisette, Crème and Allongé
Greek Freddo Espresso: How Iced Espresso Took Over From the 1957 Frappé
Walk past a café in Athens in July and the glasses on the tables are tall, iced and topped with foam. For decades that meant a frappé. These days it's more likely to be a freddo espresso, or a freddo cappuccino with a thick cap of cold milk foam. Few countries take iced coffee as seriously as Greece. The Frappé, an Accident at a Trade Fair The story goes that the frappé was … [Read more...] about Greek Freddo Espresso: How Iced Espresso Took Over From the 1957 Frappé
Manual Espresso Makers: Flair, Cafelat Robot and Picopresso Pull Real Espresso Without a Pump
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. An espresso machine is mostly a pump and a heater. Take both away, supply the pressure with your arm and the heat with a kettle, and you have a manual espresso maker. They're cheaper than machines of the same shot quality, almost silent, and they fit in a drawer. The trade is a bit more work per cup. Unlike a moka pot, … [Read more...] about Manual Espresso Makers: Flair, Cafelat Robot and Picopresso Pull Real Espresso Without a Pump
Gaggia Classic E24: The Tinkerer’s 58mm Espresso Machine Gets a Brass Boiler
As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases. The Gaggia Classic has been around for decades, and it has a reputation few machines at its price share. It's built like a café machine in miniature, and it rewards people who like to take things apart. The current version is the Classic E24, sold in North America as the Classic Pro E24. It replaced the Classic Evo Pro in … [Read more...] about Gaggia Classic E24: The Tinkerer’s 58mm Espresso Machine Gets a Brass Boiler
Is Coffee a Solution? Filter Coffee Mostly Is, Espresso Only Partly
Outside a café, a chalkboard sign makes a joke: "Not to get technical... but according to chemistry coffee is a solution!!" It's a good line, and it's partly true. Whether it's right depends on which coffee you're holding. A cup of filter coffee is very close to a true solution. An espresso is a mix of several things a chemist would file under different headings, and that mix … [Read more...] about Is Coffee a Solution? Filter Coffee Mostly Is, Espresso Only Partly