Everything to know about your everyday coffee.
Whether it’s a creamy cappuccino at a cafe or an iced long black by the beach, in one form or another, you’ve indulged in the rich flavours of the espresso. A drink that still to this day leads coffee to its global popularity, across the food and beverage industry. The rich brown nectar that’s the soul of our daily fuel such as your strong latte or three-quarter flat white, but also in vibrant deserts and even energising cocktails.
But how much do you know about espresso? This little guy puts in a lot of work for size and brewing time. Its petite volume packs a powerful kick so there has to be some complexity to its taste, how it’s brewed and where it is today?
How is it Made?
The steaming chrome box we tirelessly hide behind is the machine that helps us brew the brew that packs a punch. Trust us, we wish espresso machines didn’t always stand between our conversations, but a decent effort and focus is necessary for producing the perfect cup to kickstart your day.
The espresso is one of the quicker brewed coffees on a specialty cafe menu. With a set of skilled hands manning the machine, a barista can brew several espressos at a time. With the right fit out and work flow, a team on the bar can produce hundreds of espresso drinks during the busiest hours of the morning. It’s this efficiency that grants espresso its popularity in the cafe scene.
Espresso machines function using hot water and steam to output enough pressure through fine coffee grounds carried in a metal basket filter. Depending on the recipe, the machine takes between 20-30 seconds to yield the golden brown liquid topped with the honey-like crema we know as espresso: the base of many drinks your local cafe offers, but also perfectly fine by itself.
What’s a Good Espresso Recipe?
An espresso recipe looks vastly different to the ones used for filter coffee. The coffee to water ratio is much smaller, the coffee grinds much finer, and the pressure used allows extraction in a shorter amount of time. This results in the rich and creamy body easily complimented with your favourite milk.
The Right Ratio
You’ll likely see your local café brewing an espresso recipe that is 1 part coffee and 2 parts water (1:2) and not stray past 1:2.5. When you’re brewing closer to 1:3, you’re stepping into the land of lungo, while on the other hand at 1:1.5, you’re treading towards a ristretto recipe.
The Best Beans for Espresso
The best beans to use in an espresso recipe depends on the type of beverage you’re brewing. Many cafes use an espresso blend of beans designed by the roaster to deliver a consistent and strong flavour that can also cut through milk. An espresso blend contains as little as two to several blends of coffee origins to build a signature taste. Roasters perform thorough research and development, and quality control to make sure these blends deliver a reliable flavour all year-round.
You’ll also find some cafes with a single origin coffee on offer; coffee brewed to tell the story behind the bean's journey to your cup. Many enjoy single origin coffee without milk, as either an espresso or long black. Single origins typically don’t have enough strength in their flavour to cut through milk, but there are some that can make for a truly unique milk-based experience.
The Good Grind
Whatever ratio you choose and whether it's a single origin or blend, grinding your espresso fine enough is important for the right amount of extraction. When you’re brewing with a grind size too coarse, hot water will run through too quickly. This causes the coffee to be under extracted, pulling out mostly the acidity without sweetness. Grind too fine and the water will struggle to run through at all, risking over extraction, causing bitterness to overpower the entire cup.
Grinding the beans to the size of table salt is a great start to extract coffee between 20-30 seconds. Once you’re in that ball park, adjust as you need to find a balanced extraction with enough sweetness in the body and a heavy mouthfeel.
How to Taste Espresso?
All milk aside, this section is for those ready to accept that all the coffee you need is in the small cup of glistening bronze liquid, consumed in a few sips at the café before powering through your day. An espresso on its own is a powerful beverage with a rich suite of flavour that addresses the coffee’s journey from its producers to your taste buds.
Flavour Harmony
It’s important to understand the evolution of flavours during extraction to know what to taste for in an espresso shot. The hot water extracts a range of complex oils and aromatics from the coffee. It first pulls all the acids, before reaching the sugars and finally all the remaining bitter compounds. A balanced espresso delivers a harmony of acids, sugars and bitters to make an enjoyable drinking experience.
Your taste buds will react with sensory signs that tell you if an espresso may be under or over extracted. If you’re just tasting acidic compounds, sides of your tongue and mouth will lightly tingle as if tasting something very sour. Tasting too much bitter compounds leaves a dry mouthfeel after the sip. While the crema carries most of the bitterness, it is still essential to balancing all the flavours of the espresso.
Crema
The honey-coloured cream on top of the espresso has long been considered the sign of a good shot of coffee. This crema is the result of gas being released from the bean during extraction and really only tells you a couple things. Firstly, it will identify how recent the coffee was roasted; the longer ago it coffee is roasted, the less crema it will produce due to the carbon dioxide being released slowly over time post-roast. Secondly, a darker crema hints at a stronger flavour in the liquid, hence darker roasts producing espresso with darker foam.
Teaspoon or not-teaspoon?
Remember the flavour journey the coffee goes through to yield an espresso? That all layers into the cup, one after the other. Meaning much of the bitter notes will rest on top of the drink ready to be the first flavour to meet your taste buds.
This is why the drink is typically served with a teaspoon to allow the customer to agitate the espresso, allowing all the layers to blend in a beautiful balance.
Don’t stir it violently, just a gentle back forth a few times will give enough agitation to achieve a harmonious body of flavour.
Exploring Specialty Coffee
There’s plenty more to unpack behind this little coffee that packs a punch, but at least you’ve explored the tip of the iceberg of specialty coffee. Now that you’re informed of the fundamentals behind an espresso recipe, what to taste for and how to drink it, don’t hesitate to explore the offering your local specialty café has. Your barista will be thrilled to offer you an experience only passionate coffee drinkers enjoy. You now have the fundamental knowledge to find your preferred espresso blend, origin and beverage.
Interested in exploring the delicate flavours of coffee origins? Let us give you the run down on filter coffee.
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