What kind of coffee can you make with a piston machine?

You can make a standard espresso with every piston machine and turn this basic recipe into coffee specialties. Turn a regular espresso into an extra strong espresso, like a ristretto or double espresso. Like to drink a cup of coffee? Just put some hot water into the espresso and you've made yourself an americano. This is most similar to a 'regular black coffee'.

When you add frothed milk to an espresso, you can make all kinds of milk specialties. The cappuccino is the most well-known one. This recipe consists of equal parts espresso, milk, and foam. A latte macchiato is the one for real milk lovers. This is mostly hot milk with proportionally little coffee and foam. If you first put the hot milk into a glass and add a shot of espresso later, you get nice layers. Want it stronger? An espresso macchiato, cortado, or flat white might be more your style.

The thing that makes working with piston machines both fun and difficult is that you have to make the coffee yourself. If you get a piston machine that requires a lot of manual work, the coffee proportions are in your hand. So you make the espresso and froth the milk yourself. You can decide what recipes you want to prepare.

There are also many piston machines that have all kinds of automatic gadgets. Think of various preprogrammed coffees so you don't have to compose them yourself, for example.