United States of Coffee

Americano to drip coffee

This week is all about American coffee culture from diner drip coffee to the history of the Americano!

American coffee

American is known for its take on coffee to be generally simple and fast, this comes from the days of diners constantly serving drip coffee and refilling cups all day. Drip coffee is basically filter coffee, like that of a pour over/V60 but a machine will do the whole process rather than a barista pouring the water and timing the brew.

Additions and the extremes

America’s coffee culture also uses one thing not really seen across Europe which is cream/ creamers, these are richer in taste than regular milk or even full fat milk and add a heavier mouth feel to the drink whilst also adding a higher fat content. Creamers are a cream alternative made mainly of vegetable oil and sugars to replicate the heaviness of cream without the dairy. Creamers are also often flavoured to many different varieties allowing for some very strange flavour combinations for your coffee.

This Flavoured coffee trend became huge when large scale American brands, combined the European world of espresso with the sweet flavours America likes so much to create the blended iced coffees and syrup based drinks that have become so popular across the globe.

The history of the Americano

This drink came about from The Second World War! When American troops were stationed in Italy, the only coffee served was espresso which was far stronger and shorter than what the Americans where used to, this meant the troops resorted to diluting the espresso with hot water making the drink more alike to filter coffee as they were used to. This diluted espresso is the now know “Americano”.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this week’s topic! have a great week and some even better coffees.