What’s the Difference?

We’re often asked about the difference between espresso and coffee. And it’s a good question. It’s a bit like asking about the difference between a French fry and a tater tot. They’re the same. But they’re also very different. We have no idea how one makes a tater tot, but we do know how to make coffee (and espresso). Read on to find out the differences.

When it comes to coffee, gravity is one of the key ingredients. Espresso doesn’t care much about gravity but coffee sure does. Whether it’s a pourover, batch brew or even an ice coffee, the process is quite similar. We’ll use a preset recipe, or ratio, of coffee to water. Then we’ll grind the beans to just the right level of coarseness to allow the water to drip through the ground beans to extract just the right flavor. A coarser grind will allow the water to flow more quickly while a finer grind will slow the process down, allowing the water to spend more time flowing through the ground beans. And gravity is the driving force that moves the water down through the coffee.

Espresso - A Double Shot

Espresso is a whole different kind of animal and though we’ve never tried it, we’d expect that one should be able to make a really nice shot of espresso while sitting on the moon, or anywhere else that has really wimpy gravity. For the time being, we’ll ignore the whole lack of oxygen thing. That’ll be a problem to solve another day. Getting back to our expresso here on earth, our recipe starts with the very same beans we might use for a drip coffee but we’ll use a much stronger ratio of coffee to water. For an espresso it’s typically 1 part coffee to 2 parts water, while a typical batch brew might use 1 part coffee to 14 or 15 parts water. The other big difference here is how the water gets through the ground coffee. And this is where we get back to the whole gravity thing. Espresso ain’t got time to wait for gravity. We’ll have our espresso machine force the water through the coffee at around 130 pounds of pressure per square inch, or 9 bar. The final part of the equation is again, the coarseness of the coffee grind. If we used the same grind as our drip coffee, the water would fly through our espresso machine too fast to extract any real flavor. That’s why we’ll take the time to get the grind dialed in much finer to ensure just the right speed for the extraction process.

In a nutshell, coffee and espresso might use the exact same bean. The difference is in the process. Espresso wants a higher dose of beans at a finer grind at very high pressure, while a drip coffee likes a lower dose of beans at a grind level that let’s gravity help the water through the beans at just the right speed.

And just like the French fry and the tater tot, they’re the same, but also completely different.