If you have an espresso machine and an espresso grinder at home, the best way to prepare a long coffee is to make a Café Americano. This involves pouring a single or double espresso over a desired amount of water.
The advantage: since part of the liquid in the final drink doesn't have to pass through the coffee, it won't be over-extracted. This way we avoid bitterness in the coffee that doesn't taste good.
A good alternative is to prepare a Café crème. However, this requires a second grinder. Constantly switching the grinder between different drinks is not practical, as fine-tuning the grinder takes a lot of time.
Café Americano Recipe
Pour 100 grams of water into the cup.
Then pull a "normal" double espresso and let it run onto the water.
The final drink will then have a volume of approximately 145 milliliters. We generally recommend not using water from the coffee machine's tank, but instead heating it separately to about 75 degrees.
The amount of water added can also be adjusted using the bypass calculation to intentionally adjust the strength.
Café Americano, Caffè Americano or Lungo
As is often the case with coffee questions, you could also create entire etymological coffee treatises about the Americano and search for the origin of the word. The formally correct version is probably the Italian spelling and pronunciation. After all, we owe the Americano to visitors to Italy who found the concentration of espresso hard to get used to. Diluted with water, however, espresso becomes much more accessible. This is how it quickly got its name: Caffè Americano.
The spread of the drink around the world then pushed the Italian spelling into the background and replaced it with the popular Café, which also means "coffee" in Spanish and French and is common in German through cafés.
The Café Americano should not be confused with a Lungo. With a Lungo, all the brewing water runs through the coffee, which results in pronounced bitterness. The Café Americano is also significantly stronger in concentration than filter coffee.
Which Coffee for the Americano?
Due to the use of an espresso grinder, when preparing Café Americano you are often limited to espresso beans. As a result, the Americano also tastes and smells "espresso-like". However, the Americano makes a significant quality leap when lighter coffee roasts are used for preparation. Filter coffee roasts work well for the Americano too. Thanks to the large amount of water, the sharp acidity of the filter coffee roast is very well balanced and the drink is very well balanced.
