Usage Mondays: "Expresso"

Boy, would I love some coffee right now. I just had a few cavities filled this morning, and I haven't been able to drink any because I'll just drool it all over my shirt. So instead of drinking it, I've decided to talk about it. Oh coffee, what a treat you are. I like you just like I like my men - full of milk.

The common usage error I'm looking at today is "expresso." This fancy Italian coffee, which serves as the foundation of Starbucks itself, is actually named "espresso," with an s. "Espresso" comes from the Italian "esprimere," which means "to press out." This is a reference to the pressing of finely ground espresso coffee during the brewing process.

I would guess that the x comes in when people think of how quickly they'll be moving once they drink their espresso. They'll be "running express," as they say. But they shouldn't say "expresso" because it isn't a word.

Verdict: ESPRESSO > expresso

But now that that's done with, it might be fun to look at what makes espresso different from regular drip coffee. Fun for me, that is. After my 3 months of summer work at the Barnes & Noble Cafe featuring Starbucks Coffee in 2005, I think I know a little something about this teensy brown bean we call Joe.

Espresso is coffee that has been so finely ground, it resembles powdered sugar. You pack it really tightly so that when the boiling water passes through it, it takes about 30 seconds to brew. Espresso comes out a little thick, and it's served in a tiny mug called a demitasse.

Drip coffee is roughly ground coffee that's brewed by dripping boiling water through the grounds, so it takes longer to brew than espresso. Because the water spends more time in contact with the coffee, it comes out with more caffeine than espresso, to my surprise. It's also totally fine to dress drip coffee with milk and sugar, whereas I feel like it might be a little gauche to do that with espresso. But that's just coffee feelings, not coffee fact.

Lattes are a small amount of espresso mixed with a large amount of steamed milk. That's what most of the drinks at Starbucks are. The only non-espresso coffee drink there (besides a drip coffee) is a Cafe au Lait, which is when you fill half the cup with coffee and half with steamed milk. There's also a Red Eye, which is when you put a shot of espresso into a cup of drip coffee. But everything else, that's espresso.

Hopefully this exploration of coffee was eye-opening, ha-ha, like the way coffee is. And hopefully you stopped reading a long time ago. I still need that coffee, by the way. Could you tell?