How to Make a Macchiato: The Espresso Macchiato and the Latte Macchiato

A macchiato — in full caffè macchiato, or espresso macchiato — is a shot of espresso "stained" with a small amount of milk, usually foamed. To make one, pull a single espresso into a small cup, steam a little milk to about 60–66 °C, and spoon one or two teaspoons of the foam onto the middle of the crema.

That is the Italian drink. The word has since been stretched to cover a glass of milk stained with espresso, a sweet layered drink from a coffee chain and a whole family of Australian variants, so it helps to know which one you are making.

The espresso macchiato

1. Warm the cup with hot water and empty it.
2. Pull a single espresso into it. The espresso guide explains what a good shot is.
3. Steam a small jug of milk to 60–66 °C, letting in a little more air than you would for a latte so it forms a soft foam. You cannot steam two teaspoons of milk, so steam a small jugful; the steaming guide covers the technique.
4. Mark the espresso. Spoon one or two teaspoons of foam onto the centre of the crema, or pour a small dot from the jug.
5. Drink it at once, while the foam is still distinct.

The amounts come from a recipe by the coffee writer Anette Moldvaer, which calls for 5–10 g of milk — about 1–2 teaspoons — heated to 60–66 °C. Macchiato means stained or marked in Italian; the Portuguese name, café pingado, means coffee with a drop.

Why such a small amount of milk works

Of all the drinks made from espresso and milk, the macchiato has the most espresso in proportion. The milk is there to moderate the coffee, not to dilute it, and a little goes further than it looks.

Run the numbers. Ten grams of milk on a 30 g shot makes a drink that is 25% milk by weight; at 5 g, it is about 14%. In a 2025 study in the Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry, researchers added milk at 30% by weight — only a little more than a generous macchiato — to medium- and dark-roasted coffee. Tasters perceived noticeably less bitterness and fewer roasted and burnt notes, and picked up dairy-like notes from the milk itself, even though the milk did not systematically reduce the release of coffee aroma compounds. A spoonful of foam, in other words, takes the edge off a shot without hiding it.

Temperature is the other reason to use hot foam rather than a splash of cold milk. Say the shot lands in the cup at about 70 °C. Treating milk and coffee as having roughly the same heat capacity, 10 g of milk straight from the fridge at 5 °C pulls a 30 g shot down to about 54 °C, while the same milk steamed to 60 °C leaves it near 67 °C. A short drink has little heat to spare.

The latte macchiato

A latte macchiato turns the drink inside out. The name means stained milk: a tall glass of hot, foamed milk with espresso poured into it, so that the coffee settles into a band between the milk below and the foam above.

1. Heat and froth about 200 ml of milk to around 65 °C, with more foam than you would make for a latte.
2. Pour the milk into a tall, heat-proof glass and let the foam rise and settle on top.
3. Add about 50 ml of espresso — roughly a double — pouring into the centre of the foam.
4. Do not stir. The point is to drink through the layers.

Those are the proportions of Arla Foods' recipe, which makes the same point about the pour: aim for the middle of the foam so the layers stay distinct. Kenneth Davids, in his book Coffee, notes that brewing the espresso into a small pitcher makes it easier to pour for layering.

Why the layers form

The layers are a small piece of fluid physics. Espresso is less dense than milk, so when it is poured into the glass it tends to stay above the milk rather than sink through it, while the foam, mostly air, floats above both.

In 2017, a team led by Howard Stone at Princeton published a study in Nature Communications called "Laboratory layered latte". They poured 30 ml of espresso at 50 °C into 150 ml of milk at the same temperature. The mixture first churned chaotically, then, as the glass cooled towards room temperature, it organised itself into several distinct horizontal bands of different espresso concentration, which held for tens of minutes or even hours.

Two findings stand out. First, the bands appeared only when the espresso was poured faster than a critical speed — a gentle dribble did not produce them. Second, the cause is double-diffusive convection, the process that creates layers in parts of the ocean: the pour leaves the espresso unevenly spread from top to bottom, and as the glass loses heat through its sides, that combination of a vertical concentration gradient and sideways cooling breaks the liquid into stacked convection cells. The researchers suggested the same one-step trick could be used to make layered soft materials.

So there are two ways to get layers. A slow pour into well-frothed milk gives the classic three — milk, coffee, foam. A brisk pour, left to sit for a few minutes, can give finer stripes within the coffee band.

The Australian macchiato

In Australia a macchiato is usually just a "mac", and it has grown variants of its own:

• Macchiato, or "mac" — on its own, close to the Italian drink.
• Long macchiato — usually a double shot with a dash of textured milk, served in a glass with most of it left empty.
• Long mac "topped up" — a Perth habit: the same double shot, with the glass filled with textured milk.
• Melbourne macchiato — in some cafés, a double shot in a glass half-filled with water, with a dash of textured milk on top.

The caramel macchiato

The caramel macchiato sold by coffee chains is a different drink again: vanilla-sweetened steamed milk, espresso added on top and a drizzle of caramel sauce. It is built like a latte macchiato, but sweetened — the caramel macchiato guide explains how to make one and where it came from.

Caffeine and calories

All the caffeine comes from the espresso. At the USDA's average of 212 mg per 100 g of restaurant espresso, a single 30 g shot holds about 64 mg and a double about twice that. A latte macchiato made with 50 ml of espresso has roughly 105 mg — far more than an espresso macchiato, even though it tastes much milder. The caffeine guide has more comparisons.

The milk in an espresso macchiato barely counts: 10 g of whole milk is about 6 kcal. A latte macchiato is a different matter, with 200 ml of whole milk at the USDA's 61 kcal per 100 g coming to about 120 kcal.

When it goes wrong

For how the macchiato sits among the other milk drinks, see latte vs cappuccino vs flat white, and for its closest relative, a shot cut with an equal amount of warm milk, the cortado guide.