Ristretto
coffee
Ristretto (Italian: [risˈtretto]), known in full in Italian as caffè ristretto, is a "short shot" of a highly concentrated espresso, 20 ml (0.7 imp fl oz; 0.7 US fl oz) from a double basket. It is made with the same amount of ground coffee, but extracted (also in from 20 to 30 seconds) using half as much water. A normal short shot might look like a ristretto, but in reality, would only be a weaker, more diluted, shot. The opposite of a ristretto (Italian for 'shortened, narrow') is a lungo ('long'), which has double the amount of water. In France a ristretto is called café serré.
Regardless of whether one uses a hand-pressed machine or an automatic, a regular double shot is generally considered to be around 14–18 g (0.49–0.63 oz) of ground coffee extracted into about 40 ml (2 fl oz; two shot glasses). Thus, a "double ristretto" consumes the same amount of coffee beans but fills only a single shot glass.
Coffee contains over a thousand aromatic compounds. A ristretto's chemical composition and taste differ from those of a full-length extraction for three reasons:
More concentrated: the first part of any extraction is the most concentrated, its color typically lying between dark chocolate and umber, whereas the tail end of shots are much lighter, varying from the color of dark pumpkin pie to varying shades of tan (see photo, above right). This is an important factor when drinking straight espresso shots.
“Ristretto” enters the record as coffee. Crown Archives preserves that source wording while asking what Ristretto and coffee can confirm, complicate or overturn.
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This entry incorporates text from “Ristretto” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.