How to Make a Macchiato

Ahh the macchiato… so maligned, so modified, so bastardized a drink. Starbucks in particular almost ruined this drink’s name when they rolled out their 20oz “macchiatos” way back when. But thankfully, a lot of pushback from specialty coffee houses over the decades has claimed back the macchiato so that most consumers know what the drink really is: a shot of espresso with some foamy milk added.

Well… almost. See a macchiato in Italy is quite different from the macchiato you’d get in a high calibre specialty coffee cafe in the US or Canada. In Italy, the macchiato is quite a literal drink – it’s an espresso “marked” with a dollop of frothed milk, and nothing else (macchiato means “marked” in Italian). In North America, the machiato is more of a 1:1 ratio drink of espresso to pourable milk foam. Which is better? That’s up to you. Which is more authentic? Well the Italian version, of course.

We’ll cover both types of macchiatos (and completely ignore Starbucks’ version from this point onward) below, and let you decide which one you like more. Pay particular attention to the milk temperatures we aim for in the traditional macchiato; it makes an incredibly good drink!

For this How To, we’re using the fantastic Breville Barista Pro machine (available in Canada from idrinkcoffee.ca, and in the US from Espresso Zone) to make our macchiatos. The machine’s near instant steam ready ability, plus it’s ability to flush the system right after steaming so you can brew at proper temperatures make it ideal for building milk espresso drinks. We also used Pilot Coffee’s Heritage Blend to build our shots.

Once we get past the how tos, we’ll dive a bit deeper into the history and development of the macchiato, as well as it’s cultural appeal in Italy and around the world.

How to Make a Traditional Macchiato

The traditional, authentic, Italian Macchiato doesn’t use a lot of milk or foam. In fact, the “macchiato” word means “marked” in Italian, meaning you just mark or touch up the espresso shot with a dollop of foam. The drink is so commonly ordered in Italy that the baristas always have a pitcher of just frothed milk ready to go when building the drink. And it (generally) costs the same as an espresso; all the barista does is drop a spoonful of foam on your espresso drink, and they don’t charge extra for that.

The traditional macchiato is a very espresso-forward drink. Like 96% espresso forward. You drink a traditional macchiato just like you’d drink an espresso – three or four nicely spaced out sips. The foam doesn’t really interacts with the coffee liquor, but does its magic on the crema, softening it and balancing it out (crema on it’s own is quite bitter). Here’s how to build both a single and a double.

Preheat your espresso cup We’re dealing with a tiny beverage, and maintaining heat is important. Preheat your machine, and especially your espresso cup.

Prepare your portafilter Grind out your usual espresso dose (we use 18g in this Breville Barista Pro), level, tamp, and lock the portafilter in the machine.

Pull your espresso shot Here, decide if you want two singles or one double. We’re brewing a double in this example.

Prepare your milk for foaming While your shot is brewing, get your milk ready. We like to go with about 100ml of whole milk, and add about 25ml of half and half (10% cream) milk for an added creamy sweet boost.

Prepare to make low-temperature microfoam Here’s a secret to a fantastic traditional macchiato: you don’t have to steam milk up to the usual 65C (150F); in fact, your microfoam will be better tasting and have a more sweeter impact if you only steam to about 40C (105F). And that’s our target – create paint-like microfoam but don’t go hot.

Finish milk stretching Once the steam pitcher is the slightest bit warm to your hand’s touch, it’s time to end the milk stretching and steaming in general. This is a good rule of thumb for maximizing the milk’s sweetness for your drink. Note I have not submerged the wand at this point.

Spoon it out Take a healthy spoonful of the milk froth and dollop it right onto the espresso shot, creating a nice white cap. If you’ve brewed a double shot (like we have here), two dollops of foam will do.

Serve with a demitasse spoon Serve the macchiato with a demitasse spoon in case the drinker wants to stir things up, though we recommend drinking it unstirred, for the layering effect’s different taste sensations. Enjoy!

For a variation on this drink try building an old favourite of mine — a drink I used to order from JJ Bean in Vancouver as far back as 2008! — which we called the half and half (also known as the one and one). Prep a traditional double espresso; put two cups under the spouts and brew two shots. Froth up some milk, just to around 105F or so, and then dollop some foam into one of the two cups. Enjoy a single shot espresso, and a single shot macchiato!

How to Make a North American Macchiato

No… this isn’t the big green chain’s version. It’s just that the typical macchiato you get in most quality cafes in North America is a bit different from the one you get in Italy. In North America, latte art is king (or queen), and you can’t pour latte art in a traditional macchiato with the little spoon of foam. Nope, you need to pour some microfoam and steamed milk. And as such, the typical macchiato you get in a cafe in Canada or the USA is more of a 1:0.5 up to a 1:1 ratio drink of espresso to foamed and steamed milk. It’s a great drink on it’s own, but we’re not sure if it should be still called a macchiato, since it’s not just marked with milk foam, but indulged, imbibed, saturated with milk foam and steamed milk.

Prepare your double shot Macchiatos in N. America are almost always feature a short double shot as the foundation. The aim is about 40-45ml of espresso in about 25-30 seconds extraction, so grind and prep your portafilter accordingly. Optionally, you could go even smaller and pull a double ristretto shot as the foundation.

Preheat your cup Again, this is a tiny drink, so having everything nicely preheated will aid in providing you a better overall beverage. Also, we’re using a slightly larger demitasse cup here (it’s actually a 1950s Hotel Vancouver demitasse cup, holding about 80mls total), due to the larger volume of milk we’ll be adding later.

Brew your shot Brew the shot into the cup, aiming for 40-45ml doing a normal short double, or 30ml if doing a ristretto.

Prepare your milk Again, we like to use whole milk with a small boost of 10% cream (so use 100ml of whole milk, 25ml of 10% cream.

Finish your shot By the time you have your milk sorted, your shot should be done, delivering you 40-45ml (or 30ml for a ristretto). Time to move on to milk.

Begin stretching your milk A super advanced trick to know about steaming milk: only do the stretching portion (the time you’re actively creating foam) until the pitcher is the temperature of your hand. Once the milk is luke warm, you’re done stretching and should fully submerge the wand. We’ll talk more about this later in the article.

Submerge the wand, continue steaming Once the pitcher is roughly your hand temperature, submerge the wand towards the bottom of the pitcher, and finish bringing the pitcher up to about 140-145F.

Optional – Knock down bubbles If you still have big bubbles in your pitcher once you’re done steaming (hey, we’ve all done it), knock them down by tapping the pitcher on your counter. Also, give the pitcher a swirl, then let the milk and foam settle for a few seconds.

Method A: Pouring If you produced a nice tight pourable microfoam, go ahead and pour out your foamy milk combo into your cup; even try your hand at latte art; but don’t pour more milk than you have espresso (so if you have 45ml of espresso, only pour out about 45ml of milk and foam).

Method B: Spooning Use a spoon to restrict the flow of milk froth, and pour in about 10-20ml of steamed milk into the double shot of espresso. Then use the spoon to scoop up some foam and layer it on top of the crema.

Serve with demitasse spoon Serve your North American style macchiato with a demitasse spoon and enjoy!

History and development of the macchiato

The macchiato is essentially a superficial “macho” move by men in Italy who couldn’t bear the stigma when ordering the afternoon child’s drink (the cappuccino), but absolutely needed a bit of milk in their espresso because they didn’t like espresso’s straight bitterness.

I’m not kidding. The cappuccino and its variants have existed in Italy almost as long as the espresso machine has (even machines from the 1910s had steam arms for frothing and heating milk); but it’s always been seen as a child’s drink, or at best, the first coffee you have in the morning. To order a cappuccino after 12pm marked you as less than a man, in Italian culture. It’s ridiculous, but it’s also true, and even true to this day (the stigma, that is).

Some people just don’t like espresso without milk. But they want to take part, so at some point in the 1920s or 1930s in Italy, the idea of dropping a dollop or two of milk foam onto a shot of espresso was invented, and it got its name by customers asking for their espresso to be “stained” or “marked” by some white milk foam. No stigma. No judgement. Just someone who wants their espresso a tiny bit extra fancy.

There’s some debate that the above origin story isn’t quite accurate; I’ve seen a few pundits and book writers claim that, in the 1920s, there were two ways to get “espresso”: straight, or with a bit of steamed milk (like 20ml or less). Because it was sometimes hard for the servers to distinguish between the two drinks, especially in a dark restaurant or cafe, the bar men of the day would also spoon a dollop of foam on top of the milked espresso to “mark” it or distinguish it for the waiter, and thus the macchiato name was born that way.

I tend to go with the former origin story over the latter, because espresso with milk, from the earliest days, was a cappuccino (which gained its current name in the late 1940s; prior to that it was just called an espresso with milk), and no self respecting male in Italy would order espresso with milk after breakfast.

As a side note, there was (and still today is) another macchiato drink in Italy: the latte macchiato. In Italy, a “latte” is just a bowl of steamed milk (unlike the espresso based drink of Starbucks fame); a latte macchiato is a bowl of steamed milk “marked” with a bit of espresso on top. But I digress. Back to the macchiato itself.

In North America, the drink was always served the traditional way — especially in authentic Italian cafes, but also in most upscale specialty coffee houses — until the late 1990s when Seattle’s Espresso Vivace cafe started really pushing latte art. That latte art extended to every beverage served… the latte, the cappuccino, the mocha, and the macchiato. Vivace also pulled ristretto shots exclusively, so there was more room in the espresso cup to “play with” in pouring latte art into a tiny <60ml cup.

The pursuit of latte art in all forms is what really drove the engorgement of the macchiato in US and Canadian cafes. It was another kind of macho move; if you couldn’t pour latte art into a tiny espresso demitasse cup, well, you weren’t worth your salt. (I’m to blame as much as anyone for this kind of groove; I actually organized “latte art thimble pouring competitions” back in 2002 and 2003 – again, not kidding!). But even the best latte art pourers in the world are going to need 15, 20, 25ml or more of liquid and foam to create their art in the espresso cup, and because of this, the macchiato in North American cafes became a bigger drink, one where the ratio of espresso to milk froth and steamed milk is as much as 1:1 (though some places still keep it to a 1:0.5 ratio of espresso to milk).

Both drinks are fantastic in their own right. But both have a very different taste profile.

The traditional macchiato, the “marked” with a dollop of foam that has been frothed up to maintain as much lactose sweetness as possible, is an interesting journey into espresso tasting with the foam mainly influencing the crema.

The 1:>1 ratio macchiato is also fantastic, but the milk interacts with the entire drink and definitely changes the taste profile compared to a straight espresso. Give both a try and don’t even bother picking one over the other – just enjoy both in their own regard!

A note on milk temperatures

I’ve referenced this several times, but let me be clear: if you’re doing a traditional macchiato, only froth up the milk until the pitcher is barely warmer than your own hand. That’s really all you need, and you benefit from maximizing the tangible, discernable sweetness that the milk’s lactose has to offer. Milk is literally at its sweetest when it is roughly the human body temperature: just under 100F or under 40C. You’re increasing the milk’s discernable sweetness by warming it up, and holding it at that max sweet level by not going hotter than 105F (40C) for your microfoam.

For the same reason, you should only stretch your milk for cappuccinos, lattes, and yes, North American macchiatos, until the pitcher is roughly the temperature of your hand. Then submerge the wand fully to continue heating up the liquid milk. This results in your foam retaining max lactose sweetness, while the milk underneath continues to heat (and the lactose converts to other elements and diminishes in the milk).

Machines used in this How To

We used the fantastic Breville Barista Pro machine (available in Canada from idrinkcoffee.ca, and in the US from Espresso Zone) for these drink builds.

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