Here's my two cents. If you want to be completely accurate, you can talk about brew ratios, the coffee to water ratio. Some cafes pull longer shots, some shorter, and you can call them more lungo or more ristretto compared to the averages at other local cafes. But you need to to have a reference, based on a set of rules, perhaps like INEA's, before it makes sense to call a drink ristretto.

Alternatively, a barista can make either more ristretto or lungo drinks on the fly. This is rare; even more rare is doing it competently. A person like that can, with complete authority, call his or her varied drinks lungos and ristrettos.

another_jim wrote:Alternatively, a barista can make either more ristretto or lungo drinks on the fly. This is rare; even more rare is doing it competently. A person like that can, with complete authority, call his or her varied drinks lungos and ristrettos.

That person can call their drink anything they want! After all, who am I to argue!

If I pour several Ristretto shots in a cup can I call it a Lungsretto or should I call it a Ristrungo?

brb - gotta go find that 10mL BBQ road tar recipe...

The Ristrungo is my favorite drink! Can't think of a tastier way to get so much caffeine in my mouth at once...

another_jim wrote:Here's my two cents. If you want to be completely accurate, you can talk about brew ratios, the coffee to water ratio. Some cafes pull longer shots, some shorter, and you can call them more lungo or more ristretto compared to the averages at other local cafes. But you need to to have a reference, based on a set of rules, perhaps like INEA's, before it makes sense to call a drink ristretto.

Alternatively, a barista can make either more ristretto or lungo drinks on the fly. This is rare; even more rare is doing it competently. A person like that can, with complete authority, call his or her varied drinks lungos and ristrettos.

+1 on Jim's pocket change.

Somehow I missed this thread in the holiday maelstrom. I agree with Jim that it's more accurate to talk about brew ratios and relative strength.

Also, while the article is right that some coffees can stand up to being pulled at a higher concentration and others cannot, it misses an essential point about current trends in cafe espresso: shots are being heavily updosed and pulled short so the coffee can be tasted through the massive amounts of milk in oversized cappas and lattes. A secondary reason is that straight shots can be shaded to the sour, under extracted side to avoid the bitterness that often results from poor technique.

The second paragraph of Jim's post really interests me. The article says you make a ristretto by grinding finer and/or dosing more. Sure, you can do it that way. But you can also pull shorter. My understanding is that this is how a ristretto or lungo is produced throughout most of Italy: pull shorter for ristretto, longer for lungo. I've confirmed this works, though the time window in which it works well is somewhat narrow.

Jim says it takes skill to make ristrettos or lungos on the fly, and I'm assuming he means by baristas who do so by adjusting the dose. I'm sure that method takes quite a bit more skill that simply running the shot shorter or longer, though some judgement comes into play with that, too. Presumably, the so-called ristrettos produced via the American and Italian methods will taste different.

Anyway, in addition to the terms not being well defined, even the technique isn't well defined.

Peppersass wrote:...it misses an essential point about current trends in cafe espresso: shots are being heavily updosed and pulled short so the coffee can be tasted through the massive amounts of milk in oversized cappas and lattes.

Given the same coffee dose, why would a ristretto show through milk better than a normal or long shot? The longer shot doesn't reduce anything that was already extracted in the short shot. It only adds to it.

My point is that updosing helps with milk, but I don't think ristrettos make any difference on that score.

With the same amount of coffee, that's right: the longer shot doesn't reduce anything that was already extracted in the short shot, assuming the short shot ran long enough to get most of the extraction done (which Jim says takes place in the first 20 seconds.) The balance is the same, but one tastes stronger than the other as a straight shot because it has less water. But you would add more milk to the shorter shot to fill the cup to the same level, which will dilute the short shot with the same amount of liquid. I don't know whether the fact that it's milk instead of water would make any difference to the perception of the coffee content. Probably not not much.

But your statement assumes the Italian method of making ristrettos. If you're making the ristretto by adding more coffee, which American baristas do, then the shorter shot is going to be more in-your-face than the longer shot that was made using less coffee, and will hence be more prominent in the milk drink. So I agree that the dose is what really makes the difference, not ristretto per-se. It's just a consequence of how American baristas make ristrettos.

another_jim wrote:Here's my two cents. If you want to be completely accurate, you can talk about brew ratios, the coffee to water ratio. Some cafes pull longer shots, some shorter, and you can call them more lungo or more ristretto compared to the averages at other local cafes. But you need to to have a reference, based on a set of rules, perhaps like INEA's, before it makes sense to call a drink ristretto.

Others reading this thread would probably be interested to look at Andy Schecter's Brewing ratios for espresso beverages.

To summarize his definitions:
1x: ristretto (14g of liquid espresso from 14g of dry coffee)
2x: regular espresso (28g : 14g)
3x: lungo (42g : 14g)

Since "ristretto" is an Italian word and original concept as far as coffee is concerned, perhaps it would help to look at what they define it as: anything made with about 7g of coffee with less than 2.5 ml in volume (for a single of course).

A ristretto could thus be made lowering the extraction time or by making the grind finer. You could of course up dose the coffee, but since the Italian standards are pretty rigid with regards to dose, up dosing would probably not be a feasible option in an Italian coffee bar (unless they base them on doubles).

I think the article perhaps confuses the topic by defining a ristretto in terms of taste. A ristretto can be more or less syrupy, more or less concentrated in flavour etc. all depending on how it's made, the coffee used etc. but that's not what defines it. What defines it is volume relative to 7/14 grams of coffee.

clausbmortensen wrote:Since "ristretto" is an Italian word and original concept as far as coffee is concerned, perhaps it would help to look at what they define it as: anything made with about 7g of coffee with less than 2.5 ml in volume (for a single of course). ...

I think the article perhaps confuses the topic by defining a ristretto in terms of taste. A ristretto can be more or less syrupy, more or less concentrated in flavour etc. all depending on how it's made, the coffee used etc. but that's not what defines it. What defines it is volume relative to 7/14 grams of coffee.

She did not define it "in terms of taste." She defined it as follows:

Overall, less water is pushed through the coffee in the same amount of time as a regular espresso, resulting in a very concentrated liquid that is roughly half the liquid volume of an espresso.

I think that would match the general understanding of knowledgeable, non-Italian baristas and consumers, and particularly of the Los Angeles audience she was addressing. The Italian rules on 7 or 14 grams are interesting, but not widely honored outside that peninsula (and other strongholds of Italian culture).

Words take on different shades of meaning (and sometimes new meanings altogether) as they travel around the world. When I hear the words "specialty coffee," I'm always alert to how differently they are used by some marketing people from Erna Knutsen's meaning.