Before we move forward, let’s take a few steps backward and just glance at the origins of espresso and the mystery behind it’s name. Since it’s coffee brewed under high pressure which makes it highly concentrated in flavor, that’s what led to its name. There’s also another opinion which says that since espresso is brewed at express speed (about 30 secs), that also played a factor in its name. But if you look at the meaning of it, it points more towards the high pressure opinion stated above. ‘Espresso’ is actually the past participle of ‘esprimere’ which means to ‘press out’ or ‘to express’. So literally coffee espresso means pressed out coffee. The word ‘coffee espresso’ was shortened, and from then on it’s known as just an ‘espresso’.
By the way it’s Italy where espresso originates, way back in the early 1900’s. It became very popular there during those times, and is also popular today. Today, not just in Italy, but the tiny and punchy espresso is famous all over the world. So, what’s the reason for its popularity? We’ll look into it next.
Before espresso came into the scene, it used to take around 3-5 mins for coffee to be brewed. So, what led to its popularity was that with the advent of espresso machines…..in about 30 seconds espresso was ready, compared to 3-5 mins for regular brewed coffee. Thereby, the Italian factory workers during their breaks, preferred and ordered espresso over other coffee.
Another reason as we’ve mentioned before is its highly concentrated coffee flavor, and dark roasted style (which was the most predominant roasting style for any coffee drink). So all of these factors put together, made espresso so popular over there. Now it has spread its wings far and wide. If you go anywhere, to any coffee shop in the world today, espresso is present on its own and also used as a base for other milk drinks.
Now when we’re talking about other espresso based milk drinks, they just rose in popularity due to their flavors, textures and combination of milk or cream with espresso. To make all of these drinks such as the likes of cappuccino, latte, macchiato and others, espresso had to be prepared with an espresso machine first, thereby it had a high demand in coffee shops globally. That led to the use of espresso gigantically…as a base for other drinks. All in all, espresso stands on its own as a wonderful super concentrated drink, as well as becomes the perfect base on which world class cappuccinos, lattes, flat whites, americanos etc can be built, when it’s added with milk, cream or water.