What Kind of Coffee Do Coffee Experts Drink? Do True Coffee Aficionados Prefer Espresso or Pour-Over Coffee?

What Do Coffee Experts Drink Every Day?

What do coffee experts drink every day? FrontStreet Coffee gets this question a lot, and there is no standard answer. Going by the habits of FrontStreet Coffee's own baristas: some have a daily latte, some start the morning with pour-over, and some would rather have tea. Usually the question behind the question is either "what should I order to seem knowledgeable in front of a professional barista" or "how do I copy the habits of coffee pros?" FrontStreet Coffee believes neither is necessary — people who truly understand coffee drink all kinds of coffee and appreciate every one of them.

Starting Your Coffee Journey

Some consumers assume experts must drink a cup of black pour-over every day. Not so. FrontStreet Coffee does not think you need to start with black coffee either. If you already appreciate the elegant flavors hidden in it, stay true to yourself and keep exploring the terroir of more beans. But many people resist the strong taste of black coffee, and for them FrontStreet Coffee suggests starting with cappuccinos, mochas, or flavored lattes — drinks built with cream and flavored syrups. The bitterness gets masked by the additions, and the whole thing goes down far more smoothly.

From Beginner to Connoisseur

Beginners often envy experts who can identify a coffee's region and processing method by taste alone. In reality, becoming a connoisseur takes a long apprenticeship. Black coffee is the best window into a coffee's texture and flavor, but its bitterness and faintly burnt edge make most beginners reject coffee outright. Fortunately, the milk-based drinks above are exactly the right on-ramp.

Americano is simply espresso diluted with water, letting the coffee stretch out. And unlike lattes and other milk drinks, it contains nothing to mask the espresso — you can still taste the differences between beans.

Common Espresso Drinks Ranked by Intensity

Here is a line-up of common café espresso drinks, ranked mild to strong. If bitterness puts you off, start with a mocha — chocolate added to a milk coffee, and precisely because of that addition the coffee flavor is minimal: essentially a cup of rich chocolate milk. When that feels comfortable, move to latte. With the chocolate syrup gone, the sweetness comes from the milk itself. Once milk coffee feels natural, try cappuccino.

Both cappuccino and latte are milk coffees; the real difference is the ratio of coffee to milk. At FrontStreet Coffee, the espresso standard is 20 grams of grounds extracting about 36 grams of liquid in about 28 seconds. A latte builds on two shots with about 200 milliliters of milk integrated in; a cappuccino uses a single shot — about 18 grams of liquid — plus milk.

Cappuccino's coffee flavor is therefore much more prominent. The milk frothing differs too: cappuccino foam runs far thicker than latte foam. And there is a third drink worth knowing — Flat White, hugely popular in recent years. It has almost no foam at all; what you taste is the seamless fusion of milk and coffee, in a relatively small cup.

When even cappuccino feels easy, it is time for Americano — espresso diluted with water, generally at a coffee-liquid-to-water ratio between 1:4 and 1:8, with every shop keeping its own recipe. An Americano's flavor depends heavily on the shop's espresso beans. FrontStreet Coffee keeps four espresso bean recipes on rotation for anyone who wants to compare.

FrontStreet Coffee's Signature Blends

The star is the Warm Sun Blend that FrontStreet Coffee stores still pour today. Most shops use nutty espresso blends to save cost and guarantee harmony with milk; FrontStreet Coffee instead uses the Warm Sun Blend with its fermented wine aroma to stand apart, and adds Ethiopian Red Cherry coffee to raise the overall sweetness. The blend costs more to make, but the distinctive taste has won a loyal following. It shines in milk coffee, and as an Americano even more so — chocolate, cream, vanilla, and fermented wine aroma, with texture to match.

Exploring Pour-Over Coffee

Once all of the above feels familiar, try pour-over. Pour-over is black coffee; the difference from Americano is the extraction method — pour-over is drip coffee, and the bean selection is far wider than for espresso. FrontStreet Coffee alone carries about 50 pour-over varieties, with many options from each region. Learning beans from different regions means building your own database, sensory and flavor alike: consciously connect what you taste with familiar foods. A good tool for this is the Coffee Flavor Wheel, first published in 1995 and one of the most iconic resources in the coffee industry — the product of cooperation between WCR and SCA and dozens of professional sensory panelists, scientists, and green coffee merchants. On it, experts have mapped every coffee flavor onto everyday food references.

Learning to Appreciate Coffee

Drinking pour-over is not just drinking — it is studying. Comparing your cup against the Flavor Wheel is the most direct method, though since the wheel was created abroad, some of its reference ingredients are hard to find locally. Another accelerator is the basic theory: books explain what flavor profiles each region tends to show — Central American beans lean nutty, Asian beans run low in acidity — and, importantly, why those characteristics arise.

As for practical puzzles — how to brew, how to adjust grind size — books cover that ground too, and FrontStreet Coffee shares detailed knowledge freely on everything from understanding coffee beans to brewing methods, equipment, and roasting technique.

FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

Ready to take the pour-over leap? FrontStreet Coffee's Ethiopia Natural Flower Queen (Huakui) is famously "the coffee that least tastes like coffee": tropical fruit aromas of strawberry, passion fruit, jackfruit, and lychee, with obvious sweetness, almost no bitterness, and a smooth, juice-filled body — the perfect first black coffee for anyone weaned on lattes. When you want more structure and acidity, the Kenya Cherry Tomato steps up with its vivid cherry tomato and dried dark plum tang, full-bodied and juice-like over yellow sugar sweetness. Both are aromatic, fruit-forward pour-over beans that make the jump from milk coffee feel effortless.