Last updated on October 27th, 2023 at 14:30
It is a question that is often asked or something we are tasked with and that is Making Coffee With Espresso Beans.
Can it be done?
More over, should it be done?
Hint: Yes, you can make coffee with espresso roast.
The result might not be what you expect it to be. In the remainder of this article I will discuss how you can make cold-brewed coffee and pour over coffee with espresso beans, assuming you are at loss, out of regular beans, have an unexpected visit and still wish to be known as that guy or gal that makes great coffee.
Let’s now get on with the rest of this article and down to the nitty-gritty of making coffee with espresso beans.
Making Coffee With Espresso Beans – Can I Make Coffee With Espresso Beans?
Table Of Contents
- 1 Making Coffee With Espresso Beans – Can I Make Coffee With Espresso Beans?
- 2 Can You Make Regular Coffee With Espresso Beans?
- 3 Can You Make Cold Brew With Espresso Beans?
- 4 Pour Over With Espresso Beans
- 5 Frequently Asked Questions About Making Coffee With Espresso Beans
- 5.1 Can I Make Brewed Coffee With Espresso Beans?
- 5.2 Can You Use Espresso Roast In Regular Coffee Maker?
- 5.3 What Is The Difference Between Espresso Coffee Beans And Regular Coffee Beans?
- 5.4 Can I Use Espresso Beans For Filter Coffee?
- 5.5 What Is Coffee Mixed With Espresso Called?
- 5.6 Can I Use Lavazza Espresso For Regular Coffee?
- 5.7 How Do You Make Regular Coffee With Espresso?
- 5.8 How Do You Use Espresso Beans Without A Machine?
- 6 Frappé-ing It All Up – Making Coffee With Espresso Beans
Making a cup of coffee with espresso beans is not something that I would do in a rush as I explained why in a previous article “What is the difference between coffee and espresso beans”.
However,
you can get away with using espresso beans to make pour over, drip coffee and cold-brewed coffee and end up with “better than good” results but less than perfect due to ending up with a milder middle of the road flavor and not that distinctive full-bodied flavor associated with a shot of espresso.
To get these reasonably good results you will need the right equipment, the right coffee gear and ground the beans correctly.
Read: What is the difference between coffee and espresso beans?
What Coffee Can You Make In An Espresso Machine?
Your espresso machine is actually a versatile coffee maker which can be used to make much more than an espresso shot of strong black coffee. You can use it to make the following coffee drinks, provided you have the right beans and correctly ground coffee beans for the job at hand:
- Espresso.
- Espresso Macchiato.
- Caffe Americano.
- Espresso Romano.
- Latte Macchiato.
- Cappuccino.
- Mocha.
- Café latte.
- Double Shot or Doppio.
With that said, making a cold brew with your espresso machine should be easily provided you go along the Japanese flash cold brewing technique and make an Americano and immediately flash cold brew it by dripping your coffee over ice.
While not technically a complete Japanese flash cold brew as the brewing method is initially brewed with hot water, it is something that can be done to a reasonable effect and a fairly similar intense flavor.
Read: Can you use any beans for espresso?
Can You Make Regular Coffee With Espresso Grounds?
Strictly speaking, you can make a regular cup of coffee with espresso coffee grounds and vice versa. The end result won’t be perfect. The difference is not so much in the beans themselves, although there is a difference in their roast. The main difference is in the process of elaboration and methods of preparation.
Notably, high pressure is required to make an espresso. Without the high pressure you won’t end up with the famed thick, rich crema on top.
Using an espresso ground for making regular coffee you will end up with a slightly less acidic taste. Due to a different coffee to water ratio, you won’t experience that rich coffee taste of espresso ground when you use them to make another type of coffee drink.
Can You Use Regular Coffee In An Espresso Machine?
Can You Make Regular Coffee With Espresso Beans?
This is a slightly polemic question for coffee geeks and purists where a lot will say that you can not make a regular cuppa Joe with an espresso roasted coffee bean unless you have a dual or multipurpose machine specifically designed for this purpose.
Given that most, literally all Espresso beans are a good mix and blend of both high altitude and low altitude beans and cheaper blends are made for multipurpose and making good coffee drinks of all types, I tend to disagree and say that it is possible and that you can make regular coffee with espresso beans, but you should expect a slightly less caffeine content when using an espresso bean.
How To Make Regular Coffee With Espresso Beans?
When you are using an espresso bean in place of a regular coffee bean for making regular coffee, you can take a 2-ounce (60 ml) double cup of espresso and top it up with 4 ounces (120 ml) of hot water. This will result in you having a 6 ounce (180 ml) cup of Java that will match the taste and quality of most drip coffees.
To get a better cup of drip coffee, you can slam in an extra shot of espresso and add in a slightly less amount of hot water, reducing it to 3 oz (90 ml).
The coffee water ratio here is 3 oz (90 grams) of espresso and 3 ounces (90 ml) of water. This will rival your drip coffee maker.
When using this method, be aware of the coffee to water mix as if you decide to make a 12 ounce (360 ml) Caffe Americano this way with just a 2 ounce (60 ml) shot of coffee, you will end up with a very weak watery coffee.
How To Make The Best Coffee With An Espresso Machine
Making a perfect cup of coffee with your espresso machine is not at all complicated or complex. Just follow the steps below, and you will be making amazing espresso and other coffee drinks with your machine.
1. Switch On And Warm Up Your Espresso Machine.
To get the best out of your espresso maker and make authentic espresso drinks you must ensure that the whole machine is preheated. This step will take you up to half an hour. You can speed up this process by pulling a blank shot which has the added benefit of preheating your porta-filler.
2. Measure Your Beans And Grind Them
Set your coffee grinder to a fine grind setting. Typically, an espresso shot is very finely ground. At this point you should have your kitchen scale or better still your coffee scale ready with your portafilter on it and ready to weigh out 20 gram (2/3 oz) of the finely ground coffee powder.
At this point you should have a tiny mountain of 20 gram of coffee in your portafiller. Spread this around evenly in preparation for tampering and using your coffee tamper.
3. Tamper And Flatten Your Grounds Evenly.
Your grounds of coffee should be evenly distributed before you tamper. This you can do by gently tapping the outer edge of your tamper with your hand.
Now it is time to compress your ground coffee by tamping.
The key here is to press down straight and level. This is an important step to get right by pressing down in an uneven manner. If your tamper is not flat or is slightly uneven during this process, you will end up with an uneven flow and lesser quality of coffee.
Tamping is an important and underrated skill that is often overlooked. Thankfully, it is easy to master. Focus on your tamping skills if you are just getting started on your journey to coffee mastery.
Press down in a straight vertical fashion, applying an even force of pressure of no more than 30lbs — which is considered as the absolute maximum. Don’t over do it with the pressure. Just tamp until the grounds stop settling.
Ensuring your tamp is straight and even will help you to avert your coffee from channelling and you ending up with an under or over or inconsistent less than perfect extraction.
At this point you are ready to start brewing your cuppa Joe.
4. Pull Your Espresso Shot.
If you are using your espresso coffee machine for the first time, pull out your watch or timer app on your smartphone and time how long it takes you to pull a double shot. If things are going well, this should be between 25 and 30 seconds.
Now put it to the taste test.
If the type of coffee bean is an espresso bean, and you are using good quality coffee gear, you should end up with an awesome coffee that is dark, rich and slightly sweet. This first shot is important as it is the baseline, the benchmark for all others that you will be making.
5. Steam Your Milk.
This step is for when you are using your espresso coffee brewing machine to make a macchiato, latte, cortado or any other coffee that requires milk. If you have invested in a machine that has a built-in steam wand, you will be using this; if not you will need to invest in a separate piece of equipment for this purpose.
At this point you are ready to use your espresso machine to make a variety of coffee drinks. One of the easiest is the aforementioned Americano by using a double or triple espresso shot and adding in hot water to top up. A latte, you can achieve similar by replacing the additional water in an Americano water with milk.
Can You Make Cold Brew With Espresso Beans?
To a degree, and with the right espresso coffee beans you can make a reasonably good cold brew. If you are like me and typically add milk to your coffee you will be happy with the end product.
You are much better off with a light espresso roast or a filter roast if you are taking or serving your cold brew with espresso grounds straight up.
How To Make Cold Brew Coffee With Espresso Beans
Making a cold-brewed coffee with espresso beans is very easy to do. Use the best quality espresso beans that you can get your hands on as the key to making your cold brew this way and making it worth your while is the quality of the beans in question.
You also need a few pieces of equipment, which are as follows:
- A Cheesecloth or quality coffee filter.
- A large sizeable container to steep your brewed coffee in.
- A coffee grinder.
That is all the equipment that you will need.
The process of elaborating coffee in this way is super easy. Just follow this step-by-step process.
1. Grind your espresso beans to a medium to fine grind. The size you are seeking is slightly finer than an AeroPress grind.
2. Put your ground coffee into your container, approximately 80 grams. A French press is fine for using also.
3. Pour water slowly and evenly onto the ground coffee.
4. Move and still slowly, evenly and thoroughly until your ground coffee is evenly soaked to ensure good proper extraction of all the compounds in your coffee.
5. Leave this coffee and water solution to sit in your fridge or in your kitchen for a minimum of 12 hours. I strongly prefer to let it sit in the fridge.
6. Filter the coffee. If you are using a French Press, press down on the plunger and compress as best as you can and pour onto a filter.
7. A paper filter press is best. Pour slowly out every last bit of coffee that gets into the solution. This takes a little patience and can take up to 15 to 20 minutes per liter of coffee made.
You are now ready to enjoy the cold brew. Just grab a glass, fill it with ice and viola! Enjoy!
Add milk as desired and stir.
What Is The Ideal Cold Brew Ratio?
Typically, for a full body flavored cold brew coffee you will be looking at a coffee to water ratio of 1:8 for a coarse ground coffee. A much stronger cold brew concentrate can be anything from 1:4 to 1:2 coffee to water ratio.
An alternative that I touched on earlier, particularly when making a cold-brewed coffee with espresso beans, is to use the Japanese flash cold brew method and make the cold brew with hot water. This process produces a stronger cold brew that is less acidic.
Pour Over With Espresso Beans
It has been quietly debated in the coffee geek world if you can really use espresso grounds for pour over coffee. In this brief section I will discuss that question “can you use espresso grounds for pour over coffee”, how to make pour over coffee with espresso beans and the pour over coffee ratio.
Can You Use Espresso Grounds For Pour Over Coffee?
Yes,
as a result, you will obtain a slightly bitter, smoky, almost nutty flavor of the dark roasted espresso beans. For a fruitier taste to your pour over when elaborating it with espresso beans, use a slightly finer grind than you would for a coarse grind. This increases the extraction and adds the toasted hint from the roasted coffee beans.
Pour Over Espresso Ratio
Frequently Asked Questions About Making Coffee With Espresso Beans
Can I Make Brewed Coffee With Espresso Beans?
Yes,
an espresso roast, commonly known as espresso beans, can be used to make brewed coffee. You can grind them to the appropriate medium-coarse grind size and use them in your drip coffee maker and make brewed coffee with them. Expect a good, strong, bold tasting coffee due to the dark roast.
Can You Use Espresso Roast In Regular Coffee Maker?
Yes, you can most certainly use an espresso roast in a regular coffee maker.
However,
you should not use an espresso grind in your drip coffee machine as your filter paper, or the mesh screen of your filter basket will probably clog up and lead to a messy overflow of coffee.
What Is The Difference Between Espresso Coffee Beans And Regular Coffee Beans?
The roast profile is the only difference between espresso coffee beans and regular coffee beans. An espresso roast is a dark roast. An espresso bean can be roasted to any of the four distinct levels of the dark roast profile.
Regular coffee beans are, in this context, any non-espresso roasted coffee beans.
Can I Use Espresso Beans For Filter Coffee?
Absolutely yes, you can use your espresso beans for both drip coffee and for pour over coffee and enjoy a tasty cup of coffee. It will be an enjoyable, tasty coffee.
Just don’t use an espresso grind as it is too small and will result in too much contact time between the coffee grounds and the water, resulting in an overtly bitter, over brewed coffee.
What Is Coffee Mixed With Espresso Called?
A coffee with a shot of espresso added to it is called a red eye. More commonly, it is a single shot of espresso added to a cup of drip coffee.
Can I Use Lavazza Espresso For Regular Coffee?
Yes, Lavazza espresso Italiano is a great coffee, a blend of South American and Central American Arabica coffees which results in a strong, rich and aromatic dark roast coffee. Although it is better brewed using an espresso machine, this coffee is also great in a French press, drip coffee maker and a moka pot.
How Do You Make Regular Coffee With Espresso?
You can make all kinds of coffee beverages with your home espresso machine, from caffe Americano to lattes, mochas, macchiatos, cortados and more.
How Do You Use Espresso Beans Without A Machine?
If you have great espresso beans and have not yet invested in a home espresso machine, you can use your Aeropress, French press, moka pot and even your drip coffee machine.
Frappé-ing It All Up – Making Coffee With Espresso Beans
Techniques that can work well and yield good quality coffee are using a drip coffee maker, a French Press or good old-fashioned cold-brewed coffee the old school way.
You can take advantage of your espresso machine by using it to make a number of different coffee drinks. Just be aware of not adding too much hot water to an Americano or you will end up with a weak coffee that is very watery.
Remember you can’t just use any beans to make espresso.
Good luck in your coffee quest and adventure making coffee with espresso beans.
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Derek Marshall
Derek Marshall, a certified barista by the Specialty Coffee Association possesses over two decades of experience in specialty coffee shops. He holds professional certifications for coffee brewing and barista skills. Derek is also an author with authoritative books covering various coffee topics including specialty coffee, sustainability and coffee, coffee brewing, coffee recipes, coffee cocktails and books focusing on Brazilian coffee, Vietnamese coffee, Indonesian coffee and Malaysian coffee. As a barista for over two decades, Derek Marshall has worked in specialty coffee shops across the United Kingdom, Spain, Thailand, Malaysia, Cambodia, Indonesia, and Vietnam. His expertise extends to the distinct coffee cultures, specialty beverages, and brewing techniques of each nation. Functioning as a coffee consultant, Derek charges US$50 per hour. To learn more about Derek Marshall and Latte Love Brew, visit his About Me Page. For coffee inquiries, contact him at +34-639-410-375 or Derek@LatteLoveBrew.com, mentioning your name and location
