Intro
This guide is intended to answer all of your questions about espresso, but were too afraid of sounding like dumb to ask.
Espresso beans
I bought a package of “Chocolate Covered Espresso Beans.” I thought to myself, “Surely there are no such things as “Espresso beans.” I’ve been to a coffee farm, with coffee trees, and I didn’t see any “espresso trees.” I double checked with wikipedia, and confirmed that no such bean exists.1 It’s purely a marketing ploy.
Espresso
If you get a specialty drink at a coffee shop, they don’t just add milk to previously brewed coffee. Espresso is a single or double serving of coffee beans ground and pressed into a cup, with hot water forced through.2 Regular coffee merely drips hot water through the grounds. Forcing water through the grounds will extract more caffeine, as well as the other constituents of the bean. This tiny amount of liquid is the base of specialty coffee drinks.
Latte
A latte is espresso mixed with steamed milk and sweetener, with a layer of foamed milk on top.3
Cappuccino
A cappuccino is espresso mixed with steamed milk and frothed milk on top.4 It’s not usually flavored or sweetened and contains more milk than a latte.
Macchiato
In Italian, macchiato means “spotted.” Hence a macchiato is an espresso with a “spot” of hot milk.5
Mocha
There is no formal definition of a mocha. For the most part, it is a latte with chocolate flavoring in the form of cocoa powder or chocolate syrup.6
Espresso vs Expresso
“Espresso” is the normal spelling. However, according to the Online Etymology Dictionary, “expresso” is a variant.7
Conclusion
Most specialty coffee drinks are made with espresso. All espresso is coffee. Coffee is delicious.
1 Espresso. (n.d.). In Wikipedia. Retrieved October 2, 2018, from
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Espresso#Espresso_roast
2 Espresso. (n.d.). In Wikipedia. Retrieved October 2, 2018, from
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Espresso#Brewing
3 Latte. (n.d.). In Wikipedia. Retrieved October 2, 2018, from
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latte#Current_use
4 Cappuccino. (n.d.). In Wikipedia. Retrieved October 2, 2018, from
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cappuccino#Definition
5 Caffè macchiato. (n.d.). In Wikipedia. Retrieved October 2, 2018, from
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caff%C3%A8_macchiato
6 Caffè mocha. (n.d.). In Wikipedia. Retrieved October 2, 2018, from
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caff%C3%A8_mocha
7 Espresso. (n.d.). In Online Etymology Dictionary. Retrieved October 2, 2018, from
For some reason I always thought that espresso beans are coffee beans just roasted in a different way to make them ideal for espresso?