Guides

Types of coffee drinks and how to make them

Pick a drink to see what goes into it, how strong it tastes and how to make it at home. No two cafés pour quite the same size, so read the amounts as typical rather than official. Coffee and water are in grams because you’ll be weighing them, and 1 g of water is 1 ml anyway.

Espresso with milk

Cortado

You can still taste the espresso clearly, but the warm milk rounds off the acidity and bitterness.

  • Milk foam ≈ 10 ml
  • Steamed milk ≈ 50 ml
  • Espresso ≈ 40 ml
  • About 100 ml
Cross-section, drawn to scale, with typical amounts.

Espresso “cut” with roughly the same amount of warm milk and hardly any foam. It’s originally Spanish, and in North America it usually comes in a 135 ml Gibraltar glass.

Ratio1:1, espresso to milk
RecipeDouble shot + 40–60 ml steamed milk
MilkSteamed, almost no foam (about 60% of the drink)
Serve in120–135 ml glass
Time25–30 s shot
How strong it tastesHigh

How to make it

  1. Pull a double shot (18 g in, 36 g out) into a small glass.
  2. Steam the milk to 55 to 65 °C and keep the foam thin.
  3. Pour in 40 to 60 ml, about as much milk as there is coffee.

Tip: Steam more milk than you need. A tiny amount heats up too fast to texture properly.

Common mistake: Too much air. A second or two of stretching is plenty, and the milk should barely rise in the jug.

Variations

  • Iced: double shot and cold milk over ice
  • Café bombón (Spain): condensed milk instead of steamed milk

At a café

This one varies a lot from café to café, and one shop’s cortado is another’s piccolo. Some US cafés call it a Gibraltar, after the glass.

Cortado vs. piccolo: A piccolo is a single ristretto with a bit more milk, so it’s milkier and a little softer. See the piccolo

You’ll need: Espresso machine, grinder, scale and milk jug.