What Does a Shot Mean in Coffee? Is 1 Shot of Espresso a Single or Double? What Does 1 Shot Mean?

In the article "Want stronger coffee? Can you extract for longer?", FrontStreet Coffee mentioned that if you want a more concentrated espresso when ordering, you can ask the owner to add a shot. Recently, though, FrontStreet Coffee has noticed that many customers still hold an outdated understanding of what a shot is, and it is not unusual for someone to ask for two shots at once.

Today's shots are not what they used to be. Even someone with a high caffeine tolerance would be kept awake until dawn by that kind of concentration, three shots. So, to keep that from happening too often, FrontStreet Coffee will explain again exactly how much coffee "adding a shot" actually means. Before that, as usual, let's go back over what "shot" means in coffee.

What does "shot" mean in coffee?

The word "shot" means different things in different fields. In coffee culture, the "shot" we know is a unit of measure that comes from drinking culture. There, a shot is a small glass of spirits, and 1 shot equals 1 ounce, about 30ml. Applied to coffee culture, it similarly means a cup of espresso, a 1-ounce, roughly 30ml espresso.

Early on, though, a shot referred not just to the amount of coffee but also to the espresso extraction formula. 1 shot meant extracting 30ml of espresso from 7g of coffee grounds, also known as a single shot espresso, and the portafilter used to extract it was called a single portafilter.

Since there are single shots, there are naturally multiple shots. In coffee shops back then, you would often hear another term, "Double shot," meaning double espresso, extracted with double the parameters of a single shot: 60ml of espresso from 14g of coffee grounds. FrontStreet Coffee has said many times in pour-over articles that early on, because there were no small electronic scales, the weight of the grounds and the liquid could not be measured, and baristas determined every quantity, bean amount, grounds amount and liquid amount, mainly by volume. That is why portafilters and shot glasses doubled as measuring tools. To extract a single shot, you would use a single portafilter and one shot glass. To extract a double shot, you would use a double portafilter and then a split portafilter to divide the liquid into two portions, collected in two shot glasses.

This measuring approach was acceptable for pour-over, but for espresso it had a significant drawback. The reason is simple: espresso contains crema, and the volume of crema does not equal its weight. So when the crema was abundant, the liquid amount determined this way fell well below the target weight. When electronic scales became widespread, this method was naturally abandoned, and liquid weight became the standard.

How much coffee liquid is in 1 shot now?

In the past, espresso machines did not have high enough extraction pressure, so more liquid was needed to compensate for the defects caused by insufficient pressure, or insufficient extraction efficiency. That is why a ratio of 1:4 or more existed, like extracting 30ml of coffee liquid from 7g of grounds. Today's espresso machines generally start at 9bar, so they do not need excessive hot water to make up for weak extraction efficiency, and grounds-to-liquid ratios are generally 1:2, with doses starting from 18g. This led to an awkward situation. Because of the increased grounds-to-liquid ratio, today's single portafilter, or single shot espresso, can no longer reach 1 shot, or 1 ounce, in volume. For example, if a single portafilter uses 10g of grounds, the extracted liquid at a 1:2 ratio would be 20ml, about half a shot glass, and can only be called "half a shot." Meanwhile, the liquid extracted with a double portafilter can meet the 1 shot amount, using 18g of grounds at a 1:2 ratio for 36ml of liquid, but that is already considered a double shot, or 20ml of espresso.

Conveniently, another phenomenon broke this situation open. As technology advanced, people discovered that single portafilters, because of their structural design, are more prone to channeling. Channeling causes negative expressions in coffee, so single portafilters were gradually phased out, and coffee shops now basically all use double portafilters for their products. In the photo, the left is a single portafilter and the right is a double portafilter.

In that situation, if the old measuring method still held, with 1 shot equal to single shot espresso, then a business using double portafilters would have to extract a double shot, hand half to the customer who ordered 1 shot, and deal with the other half themselves. For shop owners, that waste is unacceptable. So from here, the definition of the shot changed. 1 shot was no longer the single shot espresso from a single portafilter, but the double shot espresso from a double portafilter. Order a Double shot and you would receive two double shot espressos. Taking FrontStreet Coffee as an example, FrontStreet Coffee's 1 shot is 38ml, extracted from 20g of coffee grounds, as shown below.

Of course, some large chain stores using fully automatic coffee machines can still produce single shot espresso only. But they also avoid confusing customers by using the number of espresso portions as the unit, rather than saying "1 shot."

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FrontStreet Coffee Recommendation

How a shot is defined matters because a shot is the base of almost every espresso drink, and the beans behind it decide how it tastes. FrontStreet's Classic Blend and Commercial Blend are built for classic Americanos and lattes. Both add a small amount of Robusta to an old-school Italian recipe, so the shot releases butter, nut, spice, dark chocolate and toast aromas, with a wild, full-bodied character and plenty of golden crema that makes latte art easy.

If you like your espresso to show a single origin's character, FrontStreet's Natural Huakui SOE is a striking option. It comes from Hambella in Guji, Ethiopia, where coffee grows as high as 2300 meters, giving the cherries a long ripening season and a complex aroma. Natural processing amplifies the sweetness, and a medium roast preserves the elegant floral and fruit notes while adding caramelization, so a Huakui SOE Americano or latte carries cream, cocoa, berry, soft florals and black tea.

For a sweeter, less acidic single origin, try FrontStreet's Costa Rica Blackberry SOE. It is honey-processed, meaning the cherries are picked, sorted, washed and then dried with the mucilage still on the bean, which shortens drying time and lets the bean absorb the blackberry-like aroma and clean sweetness of the fruit. A medium roast makes a bright, refreshing Americano, while with milk it shows cranberry cookie, raisin and nut notes.