The Little Coffee Company: “Ristretto, Espresso’s older brother”

For those times in life when an espresso just isn’t potent enough to solve the world’s problems you’re nobly carrying, restore your inner peace, or accompany you on your triumphant quest for caffeine overindulgence, man created the ristretto.

A ristretto takes its name from the Italian for ‘restricted’. It’s very similar to an espresso in the sense that it is a small drink, designed to be downed at the bar before setting forth on epic journeys. But that’s where the similarities end. We see the ristretto as the espresso’s older brother – invariably shorter, yet more attractive and with a modicum of bitterness.

We baristas have a few options as to how we create these little beauties. We can make the grind finer, we can stop the pour early, or we can combine the two for our easiest option. Adjusting the grind isn’t the quickest of tasks and isn’t going to please the queue; stopping the pour is really lazy, and won’t produce a true ristretto. But if we tamp (push the ground coffee into its little basket) a bit harder than usual, we’re mimicking the behaviour of a finer grind, and if we then stop the pour early we’re preventing over-extraction (burning) and thus creating the best ristretto out there … in super quick time.

Try one today – anyone with an espresso machine can make them. Seek, and ye shall find!

– Philippa Kelly (Director), The Little Coffee Company, Brighton