Why is Hot Americano So Bitter? What's the Standard Americano Recipe Ratio? Should You Add Water Before or After Espresso?

"Chilled like fine liquor, hot like bitter medicine," "This stuff is much more bitter than life itself," "On par with Cantonese herbal tea"... These are just some of the sharp critiques about hot Americano that FrontStreet Coffee has collected online!

In the latter half of this year, FrontStreet Coffee shared an article titled "Why is Iced Americano so Popular?" Many friends expressed that compared to hot Americano, the bitterness of iced Americano is simply not worth mentioning. From online discussions, we can also observe that without exception, people's criticism of hot Americano focuses on one aspect—bitterness, more bitter than iced Americano.

As we all know, the preparation of Americano coffee is quite simple! Whether it's iced or hot Americano, both are made by first extracting espresso and then adding water at different temperatures according to different needs. The coffee base itself doesn't change—only the water temperature differs. So why is hot Americano so much more bitter than iced Americano?

The Impact of Temperature

The impact of temperature is quite straightforward—the problem mainly lies with temperature. FrontStreet Coffee often shares a point that temperature affects our taste buds' perception of flavors. At different temperatures, our taste buds perceive different tastes differently. For example, the reason iced Americano isn't as bitter is because the coffee's temperature is too low, which decreases the perception of bitterness.

Hot Americano is quite the opposite—due to its higher water temperature, the flavor that gets suppressed is acidity. Then, because flavors balance each other out, reduced acidity means other flavors become more pronounced. Besides acidity in coffee, the most obvious and prominent flavor is bitterness, so naturally, at higher temperatures, coffee tastes more bitter.

The Impact of Coffee Beans

Next is the issue of coffee beans! Many coffee shops, due to low espresso production volume or other reasons, might only have one espresso grinder in their establishment, using only one type of coffee bean for espresso-based drinks. To accommodate milk-based coffee preparations, coffee beans need to be selected from darker roasts. Coffee beans from medium-dark to dark roasts all produce coffee with distinct roasted aromas, which harmonize well with bitterness. Additionally, high temperatures increase the volatility of aromas, easily creating the illusion that bitterness is amplified.

The Impact of High Concentration

Another reason why hot Americano is more bitter than iced Americano is the coffee concentration issue. Most coffee shops serve hot Americano in smaller portions than iced Americano because iced Americano needs ice cubes for cooling. Take FrontStreet Coffee as an example—our hot Americano uses a 1:4 ratio, meaning 40ml of coffee liquid combined with 160ml of hot water, while iced Americano also uses a 1:4 ratio but adds approximately 90g of ice cubes on top of that.

Although both have the same coffee-to-water ratio, because the ice in iced Americano melts, the actual coffee concentration in hot Americano is higher than in iced Americano. This results in more concentrated coffee flavors and tastes in hot Americano. Compared to the lower concentration where flavors can fully develop in iced Americano, hot Americano obviously tastes richer and fuller. Then, when combined with the previous factors, hot Americano becomes less easy to drink than iced Americano.

The Advantages of Hot Americano

However, FrontStreet Coffee isn't saying that hot Americano is inferior to iced Americano—merely analyzing the reasons from the perspective of "bitterness." Hot Americano doesn't lose to iced Americano; its advantages are also quite unique: because of its higher temperature, the aroma is more intense; then the higher concentration helps us capture flavors better; finally, the decreasing temperature allows the coffee's texture and taste to continuously change, creating very rich layers!

So now FrontStreet Coffee asks: Iced Americano or hot Americano, which one do you prefer? Or perhaps... room temperature Americano?

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