What is a cappuccino?
Everything you need to know about the iconic frothy coffee
TL;DR The cappuccino is a regular-sized coffee, consisting of freshly steamed milk with around 1-inch or 2.5cm of foam on top mixed with a double-shot of espresso. Chocolate powder is typically either integrated with the espresso before milk is poured or added after the drink is complete.
What is it?
In the Forest of Dean, the cappuccino is perhaps one of our most popular coffees here at Hips. Its origins are much disputed, but at its heart it’s a very simple yet sophisticated drink. Like the cafe latte and the mocha, it starts with a double shot of espresso, poured directly into a coffee cup. After that, chocolate powder is sprinkled on top of the espresso before the steamed, foamy milk is poured directly on top.
At Hips, our team adds the chocolate powder directly to the espresso, rather than adding it to the coffee after it’s made. This way it blends into the drink far better and gives it a smoother and less powdery taste than you’d otherwise find by adding it on top after the fact.
The Coffee
A good cappuccino starts with good coffee. We use a specially roasted blend of coffee beans, designed specifically for us, in the majority of our coffees. Roasted locally by Studio Coffee Roasters, our house blend is a mix of Ethiopian and Brazilian beans, roasted to a medium degree. By roasting it this way, it allows the coffee to hold onto its unique flavor characteristics from each variety of bean. If you roast a coffee darker, typically it removes some of the subtleties from the overall taste as it becomes more bitter in the process.
For each of our drinks, as standard, we use 18g of ground coffee per double shot of espresso, at a 1:2 ratio (aiming for 36g of espresso poured). We always aim to ensure that our espresso pours for around 30 seconds or so. This gives us a really well-balanced base coffee that’s not too bitter or too sharp, with a bit of sweetness to it as well. Milk is then incorporated into the mix after that.
Alternatively, if you’d like to keep your caffeine levels down, we also have a decaf option in the form of a Colombian bean, similarly roasted by our friends over at Studio.
The Milk
You can of course request a variety of different milks at Hips, including oat or coconut; however, by default, we use whole milk for all of our cappuccinos, unless otherwise requested. Cappuccino milk typically consists of a lot more foam than you would find in a latte or a mocha. Each barista on shift will steam the milk, adding more air to the milk, than you’d find in a cafe latte, so you end up with a thicker layer of smooth “microfoam” that sits on top of the drink.
When mixed in with the espresso, this adds a creaminess to it, making it incredibly smooth to drink, particularly with the added sweetness of the chocolate powder. Milk naturally mutes some of the bitterness in coffee when added, giving it a sharper, sweeter taste overall.
Custom Cappuccinos
You can, of course, tweak your cappuccino however you’d like. We offer a variety of different milks, syrups, and espressos at Hips. If the coffee is too strong, you can ask for a single shot of espresso if you’d prefer, or go decaf. We can also create the cappuccino without the chocolate powder as well, in a more traditional Italian style. All you need to do is ask.
On top of that, we typically steam our milk to around 67°C; if you’d like your drink hotter, you can request an extra-hot cappuccino. In that case, we will both pre-heat the cup using hot water and also steam the milk to a higher temperature. It’s worth noting that once milk is steamed past a certain point, it does begin to break down some of the creaminess of the milk itself. This is particularly common with milk alternatives at lower temperatures.
The Origins of the Cappuccino
There’s a lot of mystery surrounding the origins of the cappuccino. It’s often attributed to the robes of the capuchin monks in Italy. There’s an urban legend that it was due to them having brown robes and white hoods (symbolizing the split between coffee and foamy milk in the cap); however, it’s actually due to the drink, when mixed, having a similar color to the brown robes themselves (the Capuchin monks don’t have white hoods).
Interestingly, there have also been theories suggesting that the cappuccino itself originally first arrived with us in the 1700s. These stem from it being a variant of an Austrian drink, not Italian, known as the Kapuziner coffee which originated in Vienna. That version of the famous drink features a dollop of whipped cream on top of the espresso, rather than the foamed milk we use in the cappuccino today.