What is Espresso?
How is Espresso made?
What are Espresso based drinks?

What is Espresso?

Espresso is a Coffee brewing method and a Coffee drink that is made after small amount of nearly boiling water (about 90 °C or 190 °F) is forced under 9–10 bars (900–1,000 kPa; 130–150 psi) of pressure through finely-ground coffee beans. Espresso machine is required to brew authentic Espresso but other brewing methods also can be used.
It is a strong Coffee drink and is normally 30ml or 1Oz in amount.

How is Espresso made?

Espresso is made using Espresso machines. It is made in the following steps.
[Note : These steps are for when you use an Espresso machine.]

  • First we grind roasted Coffee beans in fine grind size using Coffee grinder.
  • Then we distribute and tamp the ground Coffee beans into the porta filter.
  • Then we put the porta filter in the group head
  • Then we turn on the brewing.

If we follow text book style a perfect shot of espresso is supposed to brew within 20 to 22 seconds. In this time frame an exact amount of 30ml is to be extracted.
But we can also use ratios in brewing method like 1:1 or 1:2. We will not talk about this in this article because I will make a separate article on brewing methods.

What are Espresso based drinks?

Any drink that uses espresso as the base of making the drink are Espresso based drinks.
Most common Espresso based drinks are Café Latte, Cappuccino, Americano etc.

How are these Espresso drinks?
Brewing Espresso is a must before making these drinks.
Example : While making Café Latte we first brew espresso into the Latte cup then we pour steamed milk over it.
This is why they are called Espresso based drinks.


I hope this article helped you understand about Espresso and Espresso based drinks.
You can also read my other articles to get information about other Coffee facts and questions.
I also have a YouTube channel(Benison Coffee) so you can also check that out.
Thank You ! and Stay high on caffeine.