At-home baristas with fancy home espresso machines and coffee lovers who’ve counted on their trusty 8-cup pot for a decade, it’s time to unite. While your brewing methods may be different and the bags of beans you use are labeled differently, at the end of the day, a coffee bean is a coffee bean.
What’s the Difference Between Espresso and Coffee?
The main difference between espresso and coffee is in the brewing method. Espresso is essentially super-concentrated coffee. It’s made using high pressure to force hot water through very finely ground coffee beans. If you’ve ever watched a barista pull a shot of espresso, the beans we’re talking about here are tamped down into a little puck in the handheld piece that gets locked into the espresso machine.
Coffee is brewed more slowly and with less pressure. The beans used are also not as finely ground. This brewing method results in a well-balanced cup of coffee that isn’t quite as strong or bitter as espresso.
Because of the difference in pressure when brewing, in addition to the length of brew time, the consistency of espresso vs. coffee is what varies the most. Espresso is creamy and thick, while coffee is more watered down (if you’ve ever heard coffee haters calling it bean water, well, they’re not really wrong). Noting this difference will come in handy when drinking or baking: You’re probably not going to get a rich espresso martini or a mouthwatering tiramisu if you swap espresso shots for coffee.
Espresso beans vs. coffee beans
So how are the end results so different if the beans come from the same place? Well, the beans do all start out as coffee beans. It’s when they’re roasted for brewing, though, that they become labeled as espresso beans and coffee beans.
When beans are added to a roaster, they go through a heating process. This heating process removes any moisture in the bean. Once the beans reach a certain temperature, they will crack. This is similar to heating a bag of popcorn—once the kernels are hot enough, they pop. Once coffee beans are hot enough to crack, they are ready for grinding and brewing.
If you’re a regular at your local coffee shop and you’re a drip coffee kind of person, you’re probably used to the roasts: light, medium or dark. This is based on roast time and affects the overall taste of the brewed beverage. Light roast coffee, for example, might taste milder than a dark roast, which has a bitter aftertaste.
Espresso beans are roasted even longer than regular coffee beans. During the roasting process, roasters might even wait for a second crack in the beans. The second crack also means the beans are releasing oils, which is what eventually creates that creamier, fuller texture when sipping espresso versus coffee.
Caffeine in espresso vs. coffee
Different brew methods, like a French press versus a Keurig, result in different levels of caffeine in coffee. Because there is only one way to brew true espresso, the levels of caffeine won’t change unless you have more shots of espresso.
Latte drinkers who are worried about caffeine, fear not. The longer a coffee bean is roasted, the less caffeine it will have. If you have a single-shot latte, that would be about 64 milligrams of caffeine. An 8-oz. cup of coffee will have about 165 milligrams.
Can you make espresso from regular coffee?
You cannot make espresso from regular coffee. To make true espresso, you’d need to finely grind espresso-roasted beans and brew them in a classic espresso machine. This being said, the closest you can get to espresso-style coffee would be brewing your coffee beans in a Moka pot. The pressure from the steam in this stovetop pot pushes water through beans and into an upper chamber. The coffee that results is often thicker and more strong than a regular drip coffee, a la espresso.
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source https://www.tasteofhome.com/article/espresso-vs-coffee/
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