Americanness I - Coffee...

A series of posts - complementary to the Indianness articles, about life in America. Does the concept Americanness exist.

I must admit when it comes to my ignorance about the delights of various types of coffee. Having been brought up in a family with "filter coffee" as the norm, all these talks of cappuccino, frappuccino, latte, mocha, machiato, espresso, and the likes were confusing. There was that fear of public ridicule for not knowing the basic stuff about coffee. Heeding the recommendations of friends, willingness and daringness to try out new varieties, prompted me to simply go ahead and give them all a sip.

Starbucks, with its presence everywhere, in the US was, is and would be the experiment station. This is not to mean that India wouldn't have offered me the means to sample such varieties at Barista's and Coffee Day outlets. Let it suffice, that the author was not in a position to experiment then. Since the experiments are being conducted in US, this post is being included under the section "Americanness". Purists might claim that coffee is not american. That way, there is nothing called American - for US is veritably a country of immigrants that has embraced many cultures and traditions to come up with its unique blend. Further, agreed that most of the terms and coffee varieties are of italian origin.

So, the bottomline is, out of fear for what others think about our ignorance, we might not end up clarifying. So, ignorance just piles up and at times, it does become late to go back and ask. But then, I did finally summon the courage to ask a petite barista of the fairer sex (beautiful can also be an adjective to further qualify the lady), as to what these varieties meant and how different they really were. She was kind and courteous enough to reply. Moroever, she added that it was their duty to enlightenten the world (read people like me) about coffee.

Cappuccino is 1/3rd foam, 1/3rd espresso and 1/3rd milk. Latte contains more milk and less froth than cappuccino. Frappuccino is truly american Starbuck's version of frozen cappuccino. Mocha includes cocoa. Espresso is the pure shot. People who serve coffee are known as Barista's. There is a Barista club. Barista's are commanded to take pride in being Barista's. There is this exact temperature and pressure to be applied to make the espresso. How a lower temperature might end up making it sweet and the higher temperature sour, or vice versa (not really sure).

The post on the Indian Coffee can be found here.