I am no true expert on coffee. Or espresso. Or cappuccino. Or macchiatos. Or siphon coffee. Or any coffee beverage. Not really and truly. Maybe I know some stuff about them, but a self-proclaimed expert? Naw.
But I think of myself as an expert on the americano (wink).
I probably drink more americanos than any other coffee beverage, perhaps even every beverage combined. It’s my first drink of the day, every day, and my second, and sometimes my third. I thought about the math of it all once, and it’s quite possible that I’ve made over 30,000 americanos in my lifetime. That’s a lot of americanos.
Okay, enough blah blah chest pounding stuff. In reality, I would never call myself an expert at anything coffee related; I just wanted to give a bit of background before we first dive into the CoffeeGeek How To on the Americano (and thus lay down some info to show you there’s been a lot of trial and error to get to this how to).
If you stick around in the article, later on we’ll talk a bit about the culture and development of the beverage.
We’re using the fantastic Breville Barista Pro machine (available in the US from Amazon ($799)) with the built in grinder for this how to, because we can fine tune and manually control the hot water ability, grind, and shot delivery easily and efficiently on the machine. That said, any pump driven espresso machine with hot water ability will do.