A Better Americano: The Secrets for a Great Cup of Coffee

The Americano's Hidden Problem

The Americano has a reputation problem — not for being difficult, but for being an afterthought. Espresso gets obsessed over. Filter coffee gets craft. The Americano lands somewhere in between and tends to suffer for it.

The drink has a simple origin: an espresso diluted with hot water to resemble filter coffee. It's named after American soldiers stationed in Italy after World War II who found straight espresso a bit intense. There's a historical wrinkle here worth noting. Modern strong espresso wasn't invented until 1948, when Achille Gaggia unveiled his lever machine. Before that, espresso was much closer to American drip coffee — so the soldiers may have simply wanted a bigger cup, not a fundamentally different one.

The structural problem is bitterness. When you dilute espresso into an Americano, the concentration of oils drops. Those oils do a lot of work masking bitterness in a straight shot. Dilute them away and what was balanced in the espresso becomes noticeably sharp in the cup. That's the starting point. What follows are a few targeted fixes — some sensible, some genuinely absurd — that make a real, measurable difference.

Start With the Water (and Not the Water You're Thinking Of)

The first instinct is to focus on the espresso — dial in the grind, adjust the ratio, maybe switch up the beans. That's fair, but the water turns out to be a more immediate lever than most people realize.

Many espresso machines have a dedicated steam boiler that holds water above boiling point to generate steam pressure. That water concentrates over time as it evaporates, and when you pull hot water for your Americano from that boiler, you're using concentrated, stale water as the base. The result is harsher than it needs to be.

The surprising fix — credited to World Barista Champion Gwilym Davies — is to steam fresh cold water to around 65–70°C and use that as your Americano base. Not from the kettle (which also works better than the machine boiler, but ranks second). Not from the brew group. Literally steam fresh cold water with the steam wand, then brew your espresso on top of it.

It sounds fussy. It is a bit fussy. But in repeated blind tastings, steamed water wins every time. The leading theory involves dissolved gases: steaming introduces air into the water, potentially increasing dissolved oxygen in ways that carry over into the cup. Whether that's the full explanation or not, the practical result is a noticeably sweeter, smoother Americano with less of the astringency that makes the drink hard to love. The temperature being slightly below boiling also helps — the drink is more immediately drinkable, and the finish is cleaner.

Remove the Crema

Crema looks great. It signals a fresh shot, tells you something about roast level and extraction pressure, and gives an espresso that satisfying visual density. It also tastes bad — and in an Americano, that matters more than people think.

The foam contains two problematic things. First, suspended coffee particles (the source of that "tiger striping" in a beautiful shot) that contribute concentrated bitterness. Second, a surge of CO2 coming out of solution from the brew, which adds a harsh edge. In a straight espresso, crema dissipates in seconds and the texture it provides is part of the experience — it's worth keeping. An Americano is a different story. It sits longer, and the bitterness that crema contributes has more time to spread across the cup.

Skimming crema off with two teaspoons takes about five seconds. The result: less bitterness, a touch more brightness, and a more complex finish that actually lets the coffee's flavors come through. If you want to verify it yourself, a portafilter with a two-way splitter makes the comparison easy — brew into two cups, skim one, taste them side by side. The skimmed one wins unless you genuinely prefer very dark, very bitter coffee.

The Aerocano — A Better Iced Americano

Iced Americanos tend to amplify everything that's already difficult about the hot version. Cold water accentuates bitterness, the lack of foam gives the drink a thin, attacking quality, and there's no sweetness or texture to offset it. The aerocano solves all of this at once.

The idea surfaced in coffee communities around 2021 and has since made it onto the Starbucks menu in South Korea. The method is straightforward: brew a double espresso, add it to a cup containing roughly 85g of ice and 65g of cold water, then steam the whole mixture for about 10 seconds. The steam melts some of the ice without significantly warming the drink — but more importantly, it whips air into the liquid and creates a dense, stable foam. What you end up with looks and feels remarkably like nitro cold brew: smooth, creamy, with none of the harsh edges of a traditional iced Americano.

Skimming the crema before adding the espresso to the ice gives you an even cleaner result. A small pinch of salt — literally a drop of saline solution if you want to be precise — rounds out any remaining sharpness. It's a genuinely enjoyable drink, not just a corrected version of something broken.

There's a hot version of this too. Steaming cold water with the espresso directly produces something between a foamy Americano and a black coffee cappuccino: silky, sweet, and complex, with a texture that surprises if you're expecting a standard Americano. It's not wrong — it's just a different drink with its own appeal.

Brewing Filter-Style Coffee From an Espresso Machine

If you drink filter coffee but own only an espresso setup, there's a practical approach that goes a step further than the tips above.

Instead of pulling a standard espresso — roughly 18g in, 40g out — try brewing a lungo: 18g in, but pull 60–70g of liquid out with a coarser grind. The faster flow and greater volume produce a more evenly extracted, lower-concentration shot that has the brightness and complexity of filter coffee without the texture-driven density of espresso. This works especially well with lighter roasted beans that are harder to fully extract under standard espresso parameters — the extra water does the work that a shorter brew can't.

From there, skim the crema, add it to steamed water, and you have something genuinely close to a well-brewed cup of filter coffee. It won't be identical, but it's far closer than a standard Americano — and it requires nothing beyond what you already own.

The Bottom Line

The Americano isn't a hard drink to make, but it is a drink that rewards a little attention. Most of its problems — bitterness, astringency, flatness — trace back to two things: the state of the water it's built on and the crema sitting on top of the espresso. Address those two things, and the improvement is immediate and obvious.

The aerocano is worth exploring on its own terms, not just as a corrected Americano but as a genuinely enjoyable iced coffee format. And if you're working with lighter, filter-style beans through an espresso-only setup, the lungo approach unlocks flavors that a standard espresso ratio simply can't reach.

None of this requires new equipment or different beans. It just requires giving the Americano the same kind of deliberate attention we already extend to espresso and filter coffee — and it pays off every time.