Caffè crema (Italian: "cream coffee") refers to two different coffee drinks:
- An old name for espresso (1940s and 1950s).
- A long espresso drink primarily served in Germany, Switzerland and Austria and northern Italy (1980s onwards), along the Italian/Swiss and Italian/Austrian border. In Germany it is generally known as a "Café Crème" or just "Kaffee" and is generally the default type of black coffee served, unless there is a filter machine.
As a colorful term it generally means "espresso", while in technical discussions, referring to the long drink, it may more narrowly be referred to as Swiss caffè crema. In addition, there's also Italian iced crema caffè.
Variant terms include "crema caffè" and the hyperforeignism "café crema" – "café" is French, while "caffè" and "crema" are Italian, thus "café crema" mixes French and Italian.
Preparation:
As the caffè crema is very uncommon in the English-speaking world, and not widely available outside of home brewing, there are few English-language resources on how to brew it, nor consistency in what precisely is understood by this. What is generally done is to coarsen the grind, but otherwise extract in much the same way as espresso, stopping the shot when it blonds, as is usual for espresso – the coarser grind resulting in greater volume, but the extraction taking approximately the same time (25–30 seconds). Some variants include tamping less or extracting for slightly longer (35–40 seconds), and coarser grinds generally result in less mass of grinds fitting into a given filter basket, leading some to prefer using triple-shot baskets to allow sufficient coffee.
One can make a caffè crema in a commercial setting by using the existing filter grind, which is approximately correct, in the espresso machine and otherwise brewing normally, but this would be a very unusual request.
Source: Wikipedia
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