Coffee Vocabulary

ACIDITY – This relates to taste: the coffee’s vigour, how sharp it is, how bright. Most of us enjoy coffee’s slightly tart flavour, its pleasant “acidity”.

AEROPRESS – A coffee brewing device. Decide upon your chosen grind and strength, then steep the coffee for 10–50 seconds. Now press the plunger through a tube, forcing the coffee through a filter.

AMERICANO – We’ve all heard of this one. An Americano is basically just hot water and espresso. Zero milk.

ARABICA – A commercial coffee plant, native to Ethiopia. It’s widely used and essential to the coffee industry.

AROMA – The smell of freshly ground and/or brewed coffee. That’s it.

BARISTA – A skilled espresso bar worker, able to prepare and serve all types of coffee drinks and other hot beverages.

BLEND – A mixture of two or more coffees of single origin.

BODY – A coffee drink’s richness and thickness. How it feels in your mouth.

BREW STRENGTH – The coffee amount dissolved into the cup.

BREW RATIO – The amounts of dry coffee and water used during the brewing process.

CAFÉ AU LAIT – Combines one-third coffee with two-thirds frothy milk, to create a delicious and satisfying hot coffee drink.

CAFFEINE – This bitter compound is odourless and gives coffee its stimulating effect.

CAPPUCCINO – An espresso drink, and a hugely popular one. Simply top one serving of espresso with steamed milk and froth, maybe sprinkle some chocolate on top, and then serve.

CREMA – A thin layer of foam (with a kind of caramel, golden look) that tops an espresso, covering its surface.

CLEAN – If a coffee’s flavour possesses no discernible defects, it’s known in the trade as being “clean”.

DARK ROAST – A strong roast that can also be bitter, as well as medium-dark in colour.

DECAFFEINATED – Basically, coffee that’s had most of its caffeine content removed. Ninety-seven per cent of it taken out, to be exact.

DEGASSING – When you release the gas from roasted coffee beans – a natural process – this is called degassing, and prevents the coffee from becoming stale.

DOPPIO – A double espresso, i.e. when a single shot just won’t do.

ESPRESSO – Espresso literally means “pressed-out coffee”. Pressurised hot water is forced through ground coffee (a compressed bed of it), as a brewing method that’s popular all over the world.

EXTRACTION – Sometimes flavours, oils and solids must be removed from ground coffee. This process is known as Extraction: drawing flavour from the coffee grounds.

FLAT WHITE – This is essentially a double shot of espresso coffee drink topped with microfoam (steamed milk with small fine bubbles and a glossy or velvety consistency).

FRENCH PRESS – Also commonly known as a cafetière, a French Press is a coffee brewing device designed so that a strainer plate can be slowly pushed down by hand, separating the brewed coffee from the spent grounds.

FRENCH ROAST – A lovely dark roast, deep brown in colour and with a decidedly bittersweet flavour.

GREEN COFFEE – Coffee beans that are unroasted.

GROUP – Espresso machines are designed with a fixture protruding from the front. This is called the group or group head. The filter and portafilters (aka group handles) clamp into it.

ITALIAN ROAST – With this, prepare for a hot beverage that’s unmistakably bitter in taste. It possesses such a dark brown colour, it’s almost black; it’s the darkest commercial roast available to buy, in fact.

LATTE – Lattes are coffee drinks known for having a lot of milk. Make with one espresso serving, add nearly three times as much steamed milk, and then top with froth.

MACCHIATO – Prepare a double shot of espresso, and add just a splash of hot, frothed milk. Macchiato means “marked” or “stained” in Italian.

MOCHA – A particularly comforting hot coffee drink prepared by combining espresso with steamed milk, hot chocolate and topped off with (just a thin layer of) foamed milk. Mocha is a port city in Yemen, and the Mocha coffee beans’ place of origin.

ORGANIC COFFEE – Coffee grown and processed free of chemicals, herbicides, pesticides…

PORTAFILTER – A critical component of every espresso machine – every Barista’s must-have, in fact! – a portafilter is a handheld piece of equipment used to hold ground coffee beans (espresso grounds) before and during the brewing process. It clamps into the espresso machine’s group head.

PUMP MACHINE – Used (as part of an espresso machine) to force water through a compacted bed of ground coffee, the water being pumped through at high pressure.

RISTRETTO – A short, restricted espresso shot. Because it contains less water, it’s for those desiring a more concentrated drink.

ROBUSTA – A coffee species originating in central and sub-Saharan Africa, with a higher caffeine content than Arabica, but with a blander flavour [despite being full-bodied].

SHOT – Simply a single serving of coffee.

TAMPER – A pestle-like, small handheld device. Used in espresso brewing to compress coffee grounds, as needs be.

UNDER EXTRACTION – Fail to remove enough flavour from coffee grounds, and you’ve under-extracted it. An excess of flavour, oils and solids can result in too sour a taste for coffee drinkers.

VIENNESE ROAST – A medium dark roast, with the similar boldness and rich flavour of a dark roast, but with a more delicate, subtle taste.

WASHED COFFEE – Also sometimes called “wet coffee”, washed coffee involves a thorough coffee washing process, various fruit layers being removed from the coffee bean prior to the drying process (ultimately leading to a clean flavour profile).