Espresso questions: universal standards or to each his own?

Is there anything like a universal standard for the volume of a shot of espresso?

I usually just drink coffee American style, but the other day I was in the neighborhood with some time on my hands and decided an espresso with a small cookie would be just the thing. So I went into Intelligensia, whose beans I like to use when I'm splurging.

I ordered a machiato. My memories of time in Italy are that the coffee portion was about 40% of the little cup. Also, that "machiato" implied a dribble of steamed milk in the coffee. Not a huge head of foam.

The version I got started with a shot that looked like about 2 teaspoons of liquid. I mean, it barely covered the bottom of the cup. Then, the barista filled the rest of the cup with foam, then asked if I wanted any of the milk poured in as well.

Again, my memory is that a machiato does not have foam, just a bit of milk.

So, are all these things completely open to individual interp., or is there any real standard? Because the drink I ended up with seemed identical to a mini-cappucino. (With the coffee portion amounting to less than a real sip.) Nothing wrong with that, but what made it a machiato?

Well, should we switch to a never ending debate on the mien of relativism?

Of course, there are those who will state that espresso should conform to an exact model, down to the milimeters of crema depth. But I will add (reply?) that in my earlier travels in Europe, the standard cup of coffe across country differed. Why, I ask, do we have to adopt the Italian standard per se?

In my experiences, really my dwindling memory, the coffee in Italy was the tightest cup, the most distilled essence of coffee but also the one possibly too much. I remember Spanish coffee as the best, the one that most combined creaminess, richness and pure cafeine into the most enjoyable sips.

So, I would say, that Italian espresso is surely different than what you got, but I do not know if it makes it better (per se).

Rob

mrbarolo wrote:Is there anything like a universal standard for the volume of a shot of espresso?

I don't think that there is a universal standard, but in general, the volume of liquid in a single serving of espresso is small:, no more than a quarter cup, and probably slightly less.

Re: Macchiato
I believe that in Italian, macchiato (note the spelling) means "stained". When applied to espresso drinks in Italy, a macchiato means an espresso that is "stained" with steamed milk. Whether this milk contains foam and in what proportions I do not know, but the "stain" should account for no more than approximately 20 percent of the volume of the beverage in a traditional macchiato.

In the drink that you describe, it sounds like they reversed the proportions, so that it was foam stained with coffee instead of coffee stained with milk/foam. The truly regrettable fact here is that you did not enjoy it. Life's too short for that.

Keep eating,
J. Ro

Thanks for confirming my memory (about the meaning: stained or marked). And indeed, the proportions seem to have been inverted from what I remembered.

However, there is nothing to be regretted. I did enjoy it. I was simply curious as to whether one could expect "machiato" to mean something consistently from coffee bar to coffee bar, or whether on should expect the interpretation to be completely up for grabs.

The only thing I didn't enjoy was the paucity of espresso, which was not even 1/4 of the cup, so that from a value standpoint, we're looking not so much at coffee as at beluga.

a friend was once discussing this exact thing (he is a coffee guy, has his own professional set-up he used to take around to catering events in HS).

i guess Starbucks created some crap drink called a macchiato that is nothing like the version in italy. because of this, some places have altered the way they serve it, to be more like Starbucks version. he told a story of a woman going into an independent shop, ordering what she thought was a macchiato, only to tell the barista, "this isn't what i get at Starbucks!?" i believe he promptly told her to go to starbucks

miss ellen

I think you're right on the Starbucks theory. I ordered a caramel machiato there and it had an awful lot of milk and foam. The word "machiato" probably referred to the way the caramel was added on top, or something like that.

Back when Starbucks existed in the Pacific Northwest and, otherwise, only in Hyde Park and the one just west of the river on Randolph (the first Starbucks outside Washinton/Oregon, they say), an espresso macchiato was a proper espresso with a small swirl of foamy milk.

Fast forward to 2004, and a macchiato is some kind of pseudo-milkshake with lots of caramel sauce. But you can still order an espresso macchiato, and it should only have a very small amount of foam or milk, though they tend to overdo it, probably supposing that everyone wants more of everything.

I was a daily visitor to the HP Starbucks a decade ago. It saved my life, having grown up on quarter shots of cafe cubano and drinking espresso around the house in Tampa.

To complete the tale, I was in Canada recently, and visited a Starbuck's where straight espresso drinks (ie, espresso, espresso con panna, espresso macchiato), had disappeared from the menu entirely, making room for chais and milkshakes.

Two random thoughts that this brings up: (1) why there is no Chicago "hometown pride" in Starbuck's, despite the fact that it was really a Seattle/Chicago phenomenon for a long time before it expanded (the founders thought long and hard, apparently, and decided Chicago was a good fit). There were almost none in LA and NY, for example, before the later 90's; and (2) why Starbuck's and the clones never offered a cortado (espresso with an equivalent amount of steamed milk).

I agree with VI that it is possible to get a decent espresso at Starbucks, and there are terrific "baristas" here in Chicago who have been at it for a really long time. The staff at the Southport and Roscoe store comes to mind. They could make coffee in Seattle or Padua for my money. The beans are a little overroasted, but I prefer that to some rather bitter stuff from Italy, like the Lavazza Oro, which I tend to blend with Costco's fresh roasted Costa Rican (which has its own issues, too oily, and tends to muck up my machines at home); together they make a good cup.

As the company expands, and loses its overqualified slacker work force for the dregs of our economy (especially at airports, it seems), those automated machines are taking over. Not nearly as good as a skilled bar person (who can adjust for humidity, grind, bean conditions, etc.) but better than most of the workers these days.

Let's not forget how easy it was to find a decent cup of espresso around America before Starbucks. Not very. You might not have been looking, but I was. You'd be hard pressed to find a good shot in Manhattan or San Franciso, I'm not kidding, nor am I exaggerating. Sure, a few Italian old-timers like the place in Center City Philadelphia existed, but they tended to be solo operators, and hard to find. A place like Bruna's probably always had good espresso, but that was made by an Italian guy after dinner, not at 6 am on your way to work. Most mom and pops were terrible, period. Starbucks created a market and raised the bar. I'm kind of grateful.