35 Different Types Of Coffee Explained

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No one knows who discovered coffee first, though it is widely believed that the bean's origin can be traced back to Ethiopia. According to the National Coffee Association, a popular legend claims that it was a goat herder by the name of Kaldi who found that chewing on a particular berry filled his goats with energy and kept them up at night. It was under the Ottoman Empire in the 16th century that the Ethiopian discovery was introduced to the Arabian Peninsula as an alternative to illicit alcohol (via The Atlantic).

From there, coffee was introduced to Europe. Here, the Atlantic writes that it was first viewed as the "bitter invention of Satan" till Pope Clement VIII himself took a sip of it and gave coffee his stamp of approval: "This devil's drink is so delicious ... we should cheat the devil by baptizing it," he is claimed to have declared. What started as an accidental discovery by a goat herder has now turned into a drink that millions over the world regularly depend on, albeit in different forms.

Although all types of coffee begin with coffee beans, the drink can be brewed using different kinds of equipment. Many countries also have traditional methods of brewing the drink, to which varying ratios of liquids and flavorings can be added. The mix and match of brewing methods, flavors, and drinking traditions mean that there exist a zillion types of coffees in the world, of which this list explains some of the most common ones. 

The origin of this espresso-based coffee can be traced back to Spain's Basque County, where cortado was given its name after the Spanish verb cortar, meaning to cut (per Perfect Daily Grind). A smaller version of a cappuccino, Roasty Coffee says that a cortado has just enough milk "to cut" the espresso and its acidity.

Equal parts of milk and espresso are used to brew a cortado. As Roasty Coffee reports, the milk, although steamed, has little to no foam. While the lack of froth means that cortado isn't as creamy as other coffees that use foamed milk, it also means that the steamed milk will blend smoothly into the espresso without forming layers. According to Bon Appétit. This makes cortado a very balanced coffee, only a small amount of milk allows the flavors of the espresso to shine without being too intense or milky.

Traditionally, you will find a cortado served in a small metal or glass tumbler and it usually lacks any latte art on top. While most coffees come in different sizes, a cortado is a drink that is meant to be small, and so is almost always served in one standard size even at famous coffee chains.

If the name doesn't already give it away, the red eye coffee is named after a red-eye flight that flies across countries through the night and often leaves travelers with red eyes from exhaustion (via Trade). Unsurprisingly, the red eye is a very, very strong drink. Unlike most other coffees that blend the source of caffeine with water, milk, or other non-caffeinated mix-ins, the red eye combines coffee with ... more coffee. 

Originally a secret menu item at Starbucks, Trade writes that red eye coffees can now be found everywhere. The drink is essentially just a cup of regular drip coffee but with the addition of a shot of espresso on top. The taste of a red eye coffee is often compared to an Americano, except it has more body. Although the coffee is intense, Trade finds that the sweet flavor of drip coffee works well with bitter espresso.

While the red eye usually adds one shot of espresso to drip coffee, A Couple Cooks notes that stronger versions of this already-strong coffee exist too. A black eye uses two espresso shots with its drip coffee, whereas a green eye or dead eye uses three. If there was ever a coffee to help pull through an especially sluggish day or a long all-nighter, something stronger than a red eye is going to be hard to find.

According to popular legend, Raf coffee originated in mid-1990 Russia when Rafael Timerbaev walked into a Coffee Bean outlet asking for a "good cup of coffee with milk" (via Sprudge). Taking his simple request in good spirit, the barista steamed together a concoction of cream, 2 tablespoons of sugar, and a shot of espresso. The drink became such a hit with Rafael (and other patrons), that Coffee Bean simply added the drink to its menu and named it Raf after its creator.

Through the years, baristas played with the recipe till they came up with one that is famous today. Sprudge defines it as a shot of espresso, a tablespoon each of plain sugar, vanilla sugar, and then a splash of cream. Instead of layering the ingredients one after the other in a cup, they are steamed together in a pitcher and served. The result is a super silky and glossy coffee that is on the sweeter side. The Barista Institute compares Raf coffee to the taste of a drinkable vanilla ice cream, except that it has the additional flavor of coffee as well. Some coffee shops also add syrups and spices to the creamy coffee, and a certain Lavender Raf is particularly popular.

While Raf is rarely ever found outside Russia, the sweet coffee can easily be made at home using either a shot of espresso or a coffee brewed in a French press. All you need with the coffee is some cream and vanilla sugar!

No matter the brewing method — espresso machines, drip, or pour-overs — all hot coffee is brewed by steeping coffee grounds in hot water, per Uno Casa. To make iced coffee, saturated grounds are cooled with the help of ice. Cold brew, however, is one of the rare exceptions that does not use hot water or ice to brew. According to Bean & Bean Coffee, the cold brewing technique can be dated back to the 1600s when people in Kyoto, Japan, steeped tea in cold water. Soon after, Dutch trading ships swapped the tea with coffee to find a way of brewing the beverage without the use of open fire.

Today, cold brew is made by steeping coffee grounds in cold or room temperature water for at least 12 hours (via Greatist). Over time, the caffeine, oil, and sugar from the grounds seep into the water to produce a refreshing coffee that is smooth in taste. Hot water tends to bring out the acids from a coffee, making it astringent and often requiring milk to undercut the unpleasant flavor. Because cold brew is made without hot water, Bean & Bean writes that the drink is relatively low in acidity and milk added on top only makes the coffee smoother. Additionally, Greatist notes that iced coffee requires the use of ice, which melts and dilutes the coffee's taste. Cold brew, on the other hand, packs the full punch of a coffee without diluting any flavor.

Cuba's café cubano may pass in appearance as an Italian espresso, but the two cups of java couldn't be more different. Instead of an espresso machine, a café cubano is brewed using a stovetop espresso maker called cafetera moka (via Britannica). To produce the foamy layer on top called espuma — similar to the crema that an espresso machine produces — Brittanica notes that the first few drops of coffee are beaten together with demerara sugar in a cup. Once the espuma forms, the rest of the brewed coffee is poured over it. The result is a thick, creamy, sweet, and syrupy dark-colored café cubano that is the size of an espresso shot.

According to Perfect Daily Grind, a version of cubano called cortadito is served with the addition of steamed milk. While the addition of milk depends on individual tastes, Perfect Daily Grind writes that café cubano is an integral part of Cuba's collective social culture. The coffee is drunk more for leisure than for a caffeine kick. Often, the outlet says, four to six shots of café cubano are prepared together as a drink called colada, which is then divided amongst friends and family to sip on whilst chatting. While café cubano is small enough to be swigged several times a day, when drunk for breakfast, the coffee is often accompanied by a toasted Cuban bread called pan tostado, per Britannica.

Some coffees are ancient in origin, surrounded by colorful legends, and accompanied by social and cultural traditions. Nitro, on the other hand, is the product of the third-wave coffee culture. According to Thrillist, nitro is a relatively new addition to the world of coffee and is inspired by a technique used by people who brewed beers at home in the 2010s.

To make a nitro coffee, nitrogen gas is infused into a cold brew through a pressure valve. While nitrogen has neither any color nor any odor, the gas rids the coffee of all oxygen and so stops its flavor from decomposing while giving the brew a silky texture with lots of tiny bubbles (via Here & Now). Homegrounds reports that beer brands like Guinness have long been using nitrogen to give their beer the iconic cascading effect, and a nitro coffee also has floating layers that swirl about in the glass. Along with the velvety texture of the small nitrogen bubbles and the cascading effect that they create, nitro has a similar perk as cold brew: Homegrounds reports that it is low in acidity. 

Although adding nitrogen to coffee is no cheap business, the drink became so popular amongst third-wave coffee drinkers that in 2016, Starbucks added nitro coffee to the menu of its centerpiece Seattle roastery. Since then, the nitro has become the second most ordered coffee at Starbucks flagship Reserve Roastery after the latte, according to Thrillist's reports.

The Italian word for small, piccolo latte essentially means small latte (via Australian Coffee Lovers). According to a commonly believed theory, the piccolo latte was a creation of Australian baristas who wanted to test what their coffees tasted like with milk throughout the entire day. Since a latte proved to be too large a coffee to drink multiple servings of in a day, they invented piccolo, also known as a small latte.

According to Perfect Daily Grind, piccolo lattes are made from a standard shot of espresso, two-parts steamed milk that will smoothly blend into the coffee, and a tiny layer of foam on top. While a standard latte is usually 8 ounces, a piccolo latte is nearly half its size at 3 to 4 ounces. Although similar in its small size to the cortado and macchiato, the cortado has equal parts of espresso and milk with little to no foam (via Roasty Coffee), and only a tablespoon or two of milk is added to espresso to create a macchiato (via Cru Kafe). On the other hand, Piccolo latte uses one shot of espresso and twice the amount of milk, which is then topped with a thin layer of foam. As Perfect Daily Grind has it, this composition makes a piccolo latte less intense, more milky and delicate, and a touch sweeter than its small-sized counterparts, which have more intense flavors.

When Starbucks announced in a 2015 press release that it was going to bring the flat white to the U.S., the global coffee chain started a heated debate between New Zealand and Australia as to which country could stake claim to making the first flat white (via The Culture Trip). Regardless of its contentious origin, the flat white is served similarly across the world: Culture Trip defines it as an espresso-based coffee made with steamed milk and a thin layer of milk foam.

It may sound much like a latte, but the flat white is usually a 160 milliliter drink compared to a latte that is 240 milliliters in size (via Cru Kafe). As such, it has a higher proportion of espresso to milk. Although the precise quantity differs from café to café, in general, this makes a flat white sit somewhere between the large latte and a piccolo latte (per The Old Coffee Pot). Another significant difference between the two drinks is that unlike the steamed milk used to make a latte, Cru Kafe describes a flat white using a type of finely textured steamed milk called microfoam. This is why a flat white is more velvety and creamy in texture with a stronger taste than a latte, but has more liquid than the strong and thick foamed cappuccino.

Since Starbucks trademarked the Frappuccino, cafés around the world have turned to "frappé" as the name for their ice-blended beverages, leaving the true frappé often lost in a sea of flavored cold coffees. An important part of the social life in Greece, the creation of the frappé seems to have been an accidental one, according to The Greek Reporter. As the Greek Reporter tells it, the sales representative of Nescafé was at a fair in the capital city of Greece — Thessaloniki — when he was struck by a sudden need for caffeine. Unable to find hot water, he added instant coffee and cold water to a tumbler and then shook it vigorously. And so, in 1957, the frothy frappé was born. The Greek Reporter has it on good authority that cold frappés fare well in the country's heat, and true enough, the icy coffee has become synonymous with summer afternoons by the beach.

Although espresso-based alternatives are widely available, to date the classic frappé is still made with good ol' Nescafé instant coffee powder, water, and sugar (per Craft Coffee Guru). The mix is either shaken or blended until frothy, then served over ice. Depending on the proportion of each ingredient used, a water-heavy frappé is dismissed as nerozoumi or water-brew and a frappé with too much coffee powder is called a dynamite (via Vice). While a frappé may seem harmless compared to its more intense, espresso-based counterparts, one frappé often uses 2 tablespoons of instant coffee powder which Vice says packs in the kick of four shots of espresso!

While the concept of mixing fat in tea or coffee has been around for years, the growing popularity of bulletproof coffee can be largely credited to Dave Asprey. According to Business Insider, the American computing exec was trekking in the mountains of Tibet to learn a technique of meditation from Buddhist pilgrims in the area, when a woman served him an unusual brew: tea mixed with yak butter. The peculiar combination, as Asprey says via Business Insider, cleared the fog in his mind caused by altitude changes. In 2010, he came up with what we now know as bulletproof coffee — a blend that mixes coffee with grass-fed butter and his company's Brain Octane Oil.

Per the original recipe, the bulletproof coffee is made by blending one cup of brewed coffee with 1 to 2 tablespoons of the oil and another tablespoon or two of unsalted butter or ghee till it turns creamy. Though high in fat and calories, bulletproof coffee claims to be a low-carb meal replacement for breakfast, with enough calories for a morning energy kick whilst keeping hunger pangs at bay. It is a drink perfectly suited for the keto diet (via BBC GoodFood).

While more research is needed to substantiate the claim, BBC GoodFood writes that one cup of bulletproof coffee packs in 242 to 354 kilocalories and contains more than the maximum daily recommended intake of saturated fats. Eating Well also finds that although you might want to drink the coffee for its creamy and foamy texture, it's best not to think of it as a meal replacement because it lacks protein and several other nutrients that are essential for your body.

Are you up for a little globetrotting in your coffee adventures? Next stop: Portugal, with the traditional galão. According to Coffee Affection, this recipe uses a Robusta and Arabica blend (most of what you'll find on grocery shelves is Arabica, but we recommend Vietnamese Robusta from Amazon). This coffee drink is the Portuguese take on a standard latte, different for its use of Robusta beans and milk that's been heated in a saucepan and then frothed with a whisk or frother. 

 To make a galão, Coffee Affection recommends making two ounces of espresso with an espresso machine or Moka pot. Heat 6 ounces of your milk of choice on medium-low heat, stirring frequently, then froth. Combine the espresso and milk in a mug, then sweeten with sugar or honey to your taste. Your coffee creation will be thicker and creamier with less of the bitter coffee bite that turns many people away from espresso — but bear in mind that this is not a resident of most American cafe menus. 

In contrast to a lungo, an espresso ristretto is a shot that's been cut short. This coffee's flavor is subtly different from standard shots. Whereas over-extraction of coffee leads to a bitter and smoky brew, the ristretto — the Italian word for restricted — will be sweeter and brighter. This is because the compounds responsible for coffee's flavors have less time and water to dissolve with a shortened shot, so they'll be present in higher qualities than in a lungo. The more these compounds dissolve, the more pungent and sour the coffee. 

Ristretto is often used as a voluminous espresso replacement in craft beverages, such as flat whites or americanos, to add a more robust coffee flavor. These shots are made with just 15-20 milliliters of water, so if asking a barista to substitute your espresso with ristretto, keep in mind that your drinks will either be less full or you'll need double the shots pulled. 

We have the French to thank for the café au lait, which translates to coffee with milk. If you want the silky-smooth texture of steamed milk that a latte affords but aren't a fan of espresso, the café au lait may be your go-to drink. Lattes are made with two to three ounces of espresso, and the remaining space in the cup is filled with steamed milk and a thin topping of foam. On the other hand, cafés au lait are equal parts brewed coffee — usually French roast or a very dark roast — and hot milk. The most traditional cafés au lait are made with French press prepared coffee and steamed milk, but whisked or frothed milk if you don't have a steam wand in your home barista setup will still make a silky drink, and coffeemaker brews will work just as well. 

This beverage is smooth and balanced, with a mild coffee flavor and a low placement on the caffeination scale since dark roast beans are less caffeinated than light and medium roasts, and there will be less coffee by volume than a cup of coffee and cold cream. To some coffee drinkers, café au lait may seem quite plain; you can jazz yours up with flavored beans or a dash of cinnamon powder in your milk. 

Shots of espresso, a whole heap of whipped cream, and a sprinkling of chocolate — that's all it takes to make a decadent Vienna coffee. The capital city of Austria has been mastering coffee and cafes for centuries, and we have it to thank for this drink. Traditionally served in a tall handled glass, a Vienna coffee is prepared by pouring your desired amount of espresso into the glass and adding around an ounce of hot water. Then, fill the remaining space with whipped cream — we won't judge for using canned, but fresh is best. 

The topping of a Vienna coffee is typically chocolate shavings, but you can use curls, sprinkles, cocoa powder, or chocolate syrup instead if preferred. In some Vienna coffee variations, orange zest or almond slivers replace the chocolate — we recommend trying all three, separately or together. Americanized recipes also commonly call for chocolate in the espresso to make a drink similar to mochas (via Taste of Home), but this isn't traditional. 

Vienna coffee is often confused with espresso con panna; both coffees are based on espresso and whipped cream, and Vienna coffee is simply a higher-volume version. Espresso con panna is made by adding a small amount of whipped cream to espresso in a two-ounce demitasse glass, and Vienna coffee adds much more whipped cream plus hot water to espresso in a tall eight-ounce cup. 

Just a cup of plain brewed coffee is the daily morning comfort many of us are familiar with. Drip coffeemakers are a common countertop ornament in American kitchens than thousand-dollar-plus espresso machines, so it makes perfect sense to include your plain ole cup of Joe in our coffee lineup. However, anyone who knows coffee knows that drip or brewed coffee — which could consist of coffeemakers, percolators, pour-overs, or French presses, depending on how specific you want to be — is far from plain. With 15 different ways to roast coffee plus numerous ways to change the taste of coffee at home, including bean grind, water volume, and brewing method, the possibilities in exploring brewed coffee are infinite. 

Per fluid ounces, brewed coffee is less caffeinated than espresso. However, people generally consume more brewed coffee in fluid ounces than espresso in one sitting — typically anywhere from six to 12 ounces. Coffee roasts on the lighter end of the spectrum are more citrusy and mild, with slightly higher caffeine content. Medium and medium-dark roasts become richer and slightly bittersweet, while dark roasts are smoky and bold. The most accepted ratio for beans to water when brewing coffee is two tablespoons of ground coffee per six ounces of water, but you can subtract a tablespoon if you prefer weaker coffee. 

Americano: the token drink of U.S. WWII soldiers. History says that the American military stationed in Italy during the war were not keen on the strong Italian espresso and wanted to get the drink closer to the black coffee they were so used to from back home. This espresso adaptation was so well received that not only did it follow the soldiers back to the States after the war, but it also spread across Europe and became a cafe staple. 

How does the Americano differ from the simple cup of black coffee that the soldiers were craving? Americanos are made with espresso — a type of concentrated coffee that requires high water pressure and dark roast, finely-ground beans. Drip coffee is made with whatever type of roast the drinker prefers, slow and low-pressure water intake, and a medium-coarse grind. Whereas drip coffee is milder in flavor and caffeine, Americanos are sweeter and punchier since the fast brewing time allows more of the natural flavor compounds to escape dissolving. 

In hot Americanos, the espresso shot is poured over a mug of hot water. This means the first sips are strongest in coffee taste and full of luscious crema for a smooth and full-bodied mouthfeel. The espresso will slowly melt into the water, and the beverage will get more diluted as you drink it, with the final drinks being the weakest. Assuming you're using a straw, iced Americanos are typically reversed — the espresso is poured over ice followed by cold water.

The world of coffee-based cocktails is vast and far-reaching, but is any so classic and sophisticated as the espresso martini? This elegant indulgence is a product of swanky '80s-era London Soho, where history says a bartender wanted to impress a future supermodel that requested a cocktail made with coffee (via Diego Bar Academy). When made with high-quality espresso and top-shelf vodka, the espresso martini is a smooth, edgy drink perfect for starting a night out — or keeping you awake until last call. The addition of coffee liqueur — often Kahlúa, which plays into many coffee cocktails, including White and Black Russians — makes the espresso flavor vibrant and robust, and the simple syrup helps to keep it sweet.

Liquor recommends making the espresso martini by combining two ounces of vodka (Grey Goose is a popular top-shelf choice), one-half ounce of coffee liqueur, one ounce of espresso (or cold brew concentrate if espresso isn't available to you), and one-half ounce of simple syrup in a shaker filled with ice. After a hearty shake, strain your martini into a chilled glass and garnish with coffee beans. Simple and sophisticated, with a caffeine-packed espresso punch.