Doppio — tasting notes & food pairings

Doppio

A doppio is a double espresso: two shots' worth of coffee pulled together in one go, using a double dose of ground coffee — about fourteen to eighteen grams — through a twin-spouted portafilter to yield roughly fifty to sixty millilitres. The name is Italian for "double", and the doppio sits at the heart of the espresso menu, midway between the tight, restricted ristretto and the water-lengthened lungo. Because a double basket pulls a more even, better-balanced extraction than a single, the doppio is in fact the modern café default — most machines and baristas dose to a double, and it is the standard building block from which cappuccinos, lattes, flat whites and Americanos are actually made.

BitterNon-alcoholic

A doppio reads first as a concentrated double wave of roasted coffee — deeply bitter and aromatic with caramel, dark-chocolate and smoky depth over a bright acidity and a whisper of sweetness. Drawn from a double dose through a deeper, more evenly extracting basket, it has a heavy, syrupy, almost oily body and a thick reddish-brown crema, tasting rounder and more balanced than two separate singles while delivering roughly double the intensity and caffeine of one espresso in a small, powerful cup.