Types of Coffee Drinks: The Café Menu, Explained

Almost every coffee drink on a café menu is espresso plus something: hot water, milk, foam, chocolate, cream or ice, in a particular proportion. A handful start from a different brew — filter coffee, cold brew or instant — but once you know the espresso family, you can read almost any menu in the world.

The drinks below are grouped by what gets added to the coffee, from least to most.

Espresso on its own

A ristretto is more concentrated and usually sweeter and heavier; a lungo is thinner and often more bitter, because more water has passed through the same coffee. The espresso guide explains what the pressure does and where crema comes from.

Espresso and water

Americano. Espresso topped up with hot water, typically about 1 part espresso to 3 or 4 parts water. You will often read that the name comes from American soldiers in Italy during the Second World War, who watered down espresso to make it more like the coffee they knew. That story is popular but unproven. The Oxford English Dictionary traces the word to Central American Spanish, where café americano was a derisive term for weak coffee in the mid-1950s; its first known use in English is in a Jamaican newspaper in 1964. The americano guide covers the ratio, the long black and the iced version.

Long black. The Australian and New Zealand version, made in the reverse order: a double espresso poured onto about 100–120 ml of hot water. Pouring the coffee onto the water rather than the water onto the coffee leaves more of the crema intact, and the smaller volume makes it stronger than most americanos.

Red eye. Not espresso and water but espresso and filter coffee: a cup of brewed coffee with a shot of espresso added, also called a shot in the dark. With two shots it is sometimes called a black eye, and with three a dead eye. It is the menu's most reliable way to get a lot of caffeine in one cup.

Espresso with a little milk

Macchiato. Macchiato means "stained" or "marked": an espresso with a spoonful or two of milk, usually foamed. It has the highest proportion of coffee of any milk drink. Starbucks' caramel macchiato, which debuted in 1996, is built the other way round — vanilla syrup, a mug of frothed milk, espresso poured through the foam, caramel on top — which makes it a sweet latte macchiato rather than a macchiato. The macchiato guide covers both drinks, and the caramel macchiato guide the sweet one.

Cortado. From the Spanish cortar, "to cut": espresso cut with a roughly equal amount of warm milk. The milk is steamed but not whipped into a deep foam. Catalonia calls it a tallat, Portugal a pingado or garoto, and Cuba a cortadito, traditionally sweetened. See the cortado guide.

Gibraltar. San Francisco's version of the cortado, and named after a glass. At Blue Bottle Coffee, owner James Freeman started using cheap 4.5-ounce Libbey Gibraltar tumblers, and the drink that went in them — 2 ounces of espresso and 2 ounces of steamed milk — took the glass's name. Freeman himself says the glass is most of the difference.

Piccolo. In Australia, a small glass of espresso and silky milk along the same lines is a piccolo, or piccolo latte.

Espresso with a lot of milk

These three use the same espresso. What changes is how much milk joins it and how much air the milk holds — the milk drinks comparison covers them in detail, including the long argument over who invented the flat white, and the steaming guide covers the technique. For recipes, see the guides to the latte, flat white and iced latte.

Around them sit a few relatives:

• Latte macchiato — the reverse of a macchiato: a glass of steamed milk with an espresso poured in on top, which settles into layers.
• Breve — an American latte made with steamed half-and-half, a mix of milk and cream, instead of milk. Richer and denser.
• Café con leche — espresso with roughly equal hot milk, the breakfast coffee of Spain and Latin America. See the café con leche guide.
• Dirty chai — a chai latte, spiced black tea with milk, with a shot of espresso added. See the dirty chai guide.

Sweet and dessert drinks

Mocha. A latte with chocolate, as cocoa, syrup or melted chocolate, often topped with whipped cream. The name comes from Mokha in Yemen, the port famous for its coffee trade from the 15th to the 17th century; Europeans called the coffee it shipped "mocha". The history of coffee covers Mokha's role, and the mocha guide how to make one without lumps.

Affogato. Italian for "drowned": a scoop of vanilla or plain milk gelato with a shot of hot espresso poured over it. Dessert and coffee at once — see the affogato guide.

Vienna coffee. Coffee or espresso topped with whipped cream instead of milk.

Café cubano. Espresso sweetened in a particular way: the first drops from the machine are whipped hard with sugar into a pale foam called espuma, and the rest of the shot is stirred in. It dissolves more sugar than stirring it in afterwards would, and gives the drink a thick, sweet top. See the Cuban coffee guide.

Coffee cocktails. The espresso martini shakes vodka, coffee liqueur and fresh espresso into a chilled, foamy drink; Irish coffee floats lightly whipped cream on hot coffee, whiskey and sugar.

Sparkling and blended. An espresso tonic floats a shot over iced tonic water; a blended iced coffee is the homemade Frappuccino; and the mazagran, coffee over ice with lemon, is one of the oldest iced coffees of all.

Drinks that do not start with espresso

• Filter or drip coffee — brewed at drinking strength rather than diluted from a concentrate. The drip coffee guide covers how to make it well.
• Café au lait — brewed coffee with hot milk, the French breakfast drink, traditionally served in a bowl. In New Orleans it is often made with chicory-blended coffee and scalded milk. See the café au lait guide.
• Café de olla — Mexican coffee steeped in water simmered with cinnamon and piloncillo. See the café de olla guide.
• Indian filter coffee — a coffee-and-chicory decoction from a steel filter, mixed with hot milk and sugar. See the filter kaapi guide.
• Cold brew — coffee steeped in cold water for many hours, served over ice or diluted. See the cold brew guide.
• Iced coffee — hot-brewed coffee chilled quickly over ice. The iced coffee guide explains why it is not the same as cold brew; for espresso and milk over ice, see the iced latte guide.
• Greek frappé — instant coffee shaken with cold water, sugar and ice into a thick foam. Its origin story dates it to the 1957 Thessaloniki International Fair, where a Nestlé representative is said to have improvised it in a shaker when he could not get hot water. See the Greek frappé guide, and for its espresso successors the freddo espresso guide.
• Dalgona coffee — instant coffee, sugar and hot water whipped into a stiff foam and spooned over milk. See the dalgona coffee guide.
• Nitro cold brew — cold brew infused with nitrogen and poured from a stout tap. See the nitro cold brew guide.
• Turkish coffee — very finely ground coffee simmered in a small pot and served unfiltered. See the Turkish coffee guide, and for the cardamom-spiced, often lightly roasted coffee of the Arabian Peninsula, the Arabic coffee guide.
• Vietnamese coffee — strong robusta coffee dripped through a small metal filter, usually over condensed milk. See the Vietnamese coffee guide and the egg coffee recipe.

How strong each one tastes

Taste strength is mostly dilution. Take one double espresso of about 36 g and follow it through the menu, counting a gram of milk as roughly a millilitre and ignoring the air in the foam:

That is the whole logic of the menu. Each step to the right adds milk to the same coffee, so each drink tastes a little further from the espresso.

How much caffeine each one has

Caffeine does not follow the size of the cup. It follows the number of shots.

The usual estimate for a single espresso is about 63 mg, which makes a double roughly 125 mg. A 350 ml latte made with a double shot contains exactly the caffeine of the double espresso on its own; the milk adds volume, not caffeine. In practice the real figure per shot varies a great deal with how much coffee goes in the basket — the caffeine guide has figures by drink.

Two practical consequences:

• A bigger drink is not always a stronger one. If a café makes its medium and large lattes with the same double shot, the large is just milkier. Ask how many shots go into each size.
• For less caffeine, ask for fewer shots, not more milk. Or ask for decaf.

What to order

• You want to taste the coffee: an espresso, a macchiato or a cortado.
• You want coffee with milk but still clearly coffee: a flat white.
• You like a light, airy texture: a cappuccino.
• You want something long, mild and creamy: a latte.
• You want black coffee in a big cup: an americano or a long black, or a filter coffee if the café brews it well.
• You want the most caffeine: a large filter coffee or a red eye.
• You want dessert: an affogato or a mocha.