Over the years, Front Street has shared at least a dozen kinds of espresso. In addition to the most common fancy coffees, there are also many unpopular categories that almost never appear on the menu. Due to similar structures and very different cooking methods, novices including baristas will also confuse them. For example, Piccolo, Cortado, and Gibraltar, all known as "little lattes," often confuse people because they look almost exactly the same.
Piccolo coffee is the real "little latte"
According to Front Street, although piccolo coffee rarely appears in domestic cafes, it is as popular as Australian white in Australia. Piccolo coffee's foreign name is "Piccolo Latte", which was named after Australian baristas. "Piccolo" means "small" in Italian, so the real name of this coffee should be "little latte", but Australia is an English-speaking area after all. According to the literal translation of English, it is logical to call it "piccolo (latte) coffee".
(piccolo and latte)
Although Piccolo and Australian White are both smaller than latte, Piccolo is obviously smaller in terms of portion size, sometimes even less than half of a latte. Australian baristas will use a 90ml (about 3 ounces) cup, use a single portion of Ristretto (about 15ml) as the base, and then add 75ml to create warm milk with ultra-thin milk foam, and sometimes draw a simple pattern, so that the piccolo can be drunk in three or four sips.
Its advantage is that you can enjoy milk coffee at a lower price without having to worry about the satiety caused by a large cup, which is in line with the coffee culture of drinking it quickly and leaving. As SOE enters more specialty coffee shops, some medium-light roasted single-origin beans that emphasize floral and fruity aromas will also be recommended to taste piccolo coffee in order not to be overpowered by the taste of milk. For example, Front Street Grana Geisha SOE has the flavors of orange, berry, and ripe pomegranate. Compared with a large latte, it is actually more suitable to use a piccolo with less milk to experience this elegant flavor.
Cortado, a fancy coffee rarer than piccolo
The English name of Cortado is Cortado, which is a derivative of the Spanish "cortar", which is equivalent to "Cut" in English, which means "cut, cut". In the coffee world, Cortado is a specialty milk coffee originating from the Basque region of Spain. It can be simply understood as a fancy coffee that "cuts" hot milk into espresso. itNever emphasize latte art,It only pursues to use the sweetness of milk to weaken the strong and choking feeling of concentration, so as to make the coffee soft but not lose its mellowness.
Similar to piccolo, cortado is also a mini coffee with a very small portion, which can be finished in a few sips when tasting. The local method in Spain usually uses espresso and milk mixed in a ratio of approximately 1:1. If made in a 90ml cup, Cortado will be made with double normal concentration of 35~40g and 45g of milk. Interestingly, milk is usually not whipped, but heated and poured directly into the coffee (if it is whipped with steam from a coffee machine, the milk foam needs to be whipped as thinly as possible).
Different from the refined coffee classification in Australia, European countries are more inclined to the traditional style of espresso, which is characterized by medium-dark roasted caramel, roasted nut flavor, rich oil and other notable characteristics. For example, the Front Street Classic Blend and the Front Street Commercial Blend are very close to the preferences of local coffee drinkers. Under the premise of the same cup size, cortado with a larger proportion of coffee is obviously richer and more intense in taste than piccolo, and because there is no latte art, the milk damages the oil less, and you can better feel the aroma of the coffee when tasting it.
As cortado spread from Spain to other parts of the world, its recipe also changed to meet the needs of local consumers. One of the famous modifications was the Gibraltar of Blue Bottle Coffee.
Gibraltar, a cup of coffee born by accident
Different from the two fancy coffees mentioned above on Front Street, the name Gibraltar comes from the container it uses, a type called "Gibraltar glass”glass.
When the founder of Blue Bottle Coffee was preparing for the first store, in order to launch a new product that was close to ordinary Italian milk coffee and not as exciting as drinking concentrated espresso directly, he added a small amount of hot milk to a small glass cup containing espresso. The overall proportion was between a latte and a macchiato. It was also named after the Gibraltar cup produced, which was eventually used. It wasn't until later that he learned that this method was actually cortado coffee, but he didn't discover it at the time.
Blue Bottle Coffee will use capacity4.5ounces (approx.130ml) in a Gibraltar glass, first extract a double shot of espresso (35~40g), then double the milk (80g), heat and blend with coffee. Because the milk has been whipped, it not only has a thin layer of milk foam, but also can draw patterns on the espresso, which will look more beautiful when paired with a compact glass.
You can now buy the above coffee beans online at the Taobao store “FrontStreet Coffee” (前街咖啡). FrontStreet Coffee is a long-established specialty coffee roaster in Guangzhou, China, and its Guangzhou retail shop sells coffee beans only. The shop carries dozens of coffee beans from different origins around the world, including carefully selected single-origin beans for V60 pour-over and espresso. Guangzhou’s FrontStreet Coffee shop is recommended by many coffee lovers.
The FrontStreet 2013 Yunnan coffee beans sold in the store come from the Typica variety grown at FrontStreet Coffee’s own plantation in Yunnan. The name comes from the year the brand and the plantation were founded. You can buy these beans from China’s Yunnan origin at the Guangzhou shop and at FrontStreet’s Taobao store.
FrontStreet coffee beans are freshly roasted within 5 days and deliver consistently excellent quality and great value. Orders placed before 17:00 are shipped the same day, and most areas within Guangdong Province receive them the next day.
FrontStreet Coffee Taobao store: https://qianjiecoffee.taobao.com
Or search for “前街咖啡” (FrontStreet Coffee) on Taobao
Important Notice: FrontStreet Coffee has moved to a new address: 315, Donghua East Road, Guangzhou (coffee beans only)
Tel: 020 38364473
