Espresso Drinks Explained: Histories, Recipes and More…

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 the 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 wanna make at home. So, first on the list, let's talk about espresso. 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, it'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 wanna 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. Now, one quick note, if you're in Italy, you'll probably notice that no one really orders an espresso at the bar, they say un caffè, 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. A common variation on an espresso is a ristretto. The 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. 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 a 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. Next up is espresso compana. 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 wanna buffer a bit of that bitterness with the cream. It's not typically served with lighter roasted, more modern-style specialty coffees. 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. 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. 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 out, and it can be anywhere from a one-to-one ratio of coffee to milk to a one-to-three in some cases too. 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. 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. The story you most often hear about the Americano is that after World War II, American soldiers stationed in Italy couldn't handle espresso, and so would ask 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 filter 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 pull 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. Now, 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. The cappuccino is super interesting to me because it has such an interesting history. In fact, I made a whole video about its history, but ultimately, the drink predates espresso. It goes all the way back to Vienna, and it was called a cappuccino, and here, you used coffee and milk, and you mixed them to the color of the cappuccino monk's 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 microfoam where bubbles are 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. So the cafe au lait 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 cafe au lait, the modern cafe au lait, 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. 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 a 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. Caffe Caretto 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, 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 Caretto. Historically, the word mocha kind of existed in and 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 chocolatier, 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 wanna touch on quickly, but before that, I wanna talk about this video's sponsor with a short ad for Skillshare. Skillshare is an online learning community where millions go to take the next step in their creative journey. I use it to indulge my creativity, to fire my creativity in a whole bunch of different things. Sometimes that might be photography or it might be something culinary. Recently, it's been video. I've really enjoyed Hallease Navias' class on video for Instagram. Sometimes I like to go back to the basics and kind of dive right in from the beginning, and Hallease is a great teacher. I enjoyed this class, not just because it was a great refresher of the basics, but because Hallease is a great teacher, and as someone who does a lot of teaching and communicating through video, watching a great teacher teach is also super useful for me. Premium members get access to everything, unlimited classes, and they're adding new stuff all the time. If you wanna check it out, click the link down below in the description. The first thousand of you to sign up will get a one month free trial of Skillshare. Thank you to Skillshare for sponsoring this video. 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 arrive first thing in the morning and feel pretty terrible and need some coffee to pick you up. It's basically a filter 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 filter coffee with me, but if you're in a hurry, I guess just throw it all together, have some fun. Now, the brevet latte is another kind of variation that I typically only see in North America. It refers to a cafe 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 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 cafe latte. Last up, I wanna 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 Libby. 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, 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 Libby 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 cause 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.