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The CoffeeGeek Espresso Drink Compendium is the result of over twenty years writing about, testing, developing and yes, even judging (officially) the espresso beverage and all the aspects that go into it and the ways it can be modified. We also worked hard with the Compendium sponsor, Breville, to bring you up to date and cutting edge methods to make espresso based drinks, using some of the most advanced consumer products available today for making the drinks. Creative Commons Licensing is enforced for this content. |
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| This guide and all its components are owned by CoffeeGeek.com and are covered by the Creative Commons license.
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Espresso. A beverage that, as we know it today, is only 60 years old, give or take a few years. Oh sure, the drink known as “espresso” has been around since 1905, but the modern day espresso, made with high (7-12BAR, or 100-175PSI) pressure and resulting in a crema laden gem of concentrated elixir, first saw the light of day soon after World War II, when Achilles Gaggia introduced the “crema caffe” to the world.
For many folks, espresso is it. Espresso, and nothing else. But for even more people around the world, espresso is simply a building block towards other coffee drinks. Some have cream added; others use milk. Some have hot water added, others involve ice. Chocolate and sugar make up other builds. Even ice cream (or gelato) is used in some very popular espresso based drinks.
This is CoffeeGeek’s Compendium Guide to all these beverages built on a foundation of good espresso. We have eighteen drinks, and counting. Each and every one of them has details-rich How To published on our website for you to dive deep into. We’ll try to provide some history and background, and tips on how to make these beverages even better.
We’d like to thank Breville for helping to sponsor the writing and development of these guides and how tos; on top of providing us with the machines to use in these guides, they have also provided us with research they’ve done on things like milk, microfoam and espresso development that have really helped to round out these articles. Of course, any of these drinks can be made with any capable espresso machine, grinder, and quality coffee, but you also can’t go wrong with one of Breville’s modern line up of top tier espresso machines for building the perfect espresso, and the perfect base for any of these drinks.
This Compendium Guide is broken down into sections, outlined below. Each section will get more into the drinks, as well as link directly to their comprehensive How Tos. We did pull Espresso out of the Purist drink category and put it on its own, as it is the basis of all these other drink builds.