How to Prepare Your CoffeeSwiss Café Crème
Order 'a coffee' anywhere in Switzerland and this is what arrives: a full cup pulled straight through the espresso machine, no water added afterward. Café crème grew up alongside the country's own fully-automatic machines in the mid-twentieth century, and Swiss cafés standardized the pour by the 1950s until it became the default — about a third of every coffee ordered in a Swiss restaurant today. The name is a leftover from when a dash of real cream rode on top; now it names the velvety crema the long pull leaves behind, and the cup is drunk black, sugar on the side.
Ratio breakdown
Ingredients run from the top of the cup to the bottom; the last item is the bottom layer. Values are normalized to a true 100% stack.
What you need
- 150 ml extractedWater
- 15 g, coarser than espresso grindCoffee
Method notes
- Grind
- Coarser than espresso — closer to a filter grind
- Water temperature
- 90–94°C
- Total time
- 1 min
Steps
Grind coarser than an espresso dose
Café crème pushes roughly four times the water through the same bed an espresso would use, so a fine espresso grind chokes the shot and drags out bitterness — the coarser grind is what keeps a 25–30 second pull balanced instead of harsh.
Dose 15 g into a double portafilter
This sits between an espresso and a full lungo dose — enough coffee to carry the extra water without the cup tasting thin.
Pull the full extraction, don't cut it short
The shot is meant to run to volume, not stop early like a ristretto — café crème's balance depends on the whole pull finishing on its own, with the crema settling as it does.
Stop around 150 ml and serve black
The finished pour should read like a proper cup, not a stretched espresso — sugar goes on the side, but milk never joins café crème the way it does a cappuccino.
Tips
- Watch the pour, not just the clock — the crema should still be forming a thin, even layer at 150 ml; a shot that runs flat and pale before then was ground too coarse.
- This is the everyday order — in Swiss cafés, asking for 'un café' or 'einen Kaffee' gets you a café crème by default, not an espresso.
Common mistakes
- Using an espresso grind — it chokes the longer pull, over-extracts, and the extra water only concentrates the bitterness instead of diluting it.
- Treating it as a lungo — a lungo is the same fine grind and dose stretched past its balance point; café crème recalibrates the grind for the higher water volume instead of just running an espresso longer.
FAQ
Is café crème the same as a lungo?
No, even though both use more water than a standard espresso. A lungo keeps the espresso's fine grind and dose and simply lets more water through, which drags harsher, over-extracted flavor out of the same bed. Café crème starts from a coarser grind calibrated for its own higher water volume, so the extra length comes out balanced rather than bitter — a genuinely separate recipe, not a stretched espresso.
Why is it called 'crème' if there's no milk in it?
The name predates today's recipe. Café crème was originally served with a small dash of real cream to soften the rough extractions of early machines; once automatic machines improved, the added cream disappeared and the name stayed, now describing the velvety crema foam the long pull produces on its own. It is drunk black — milk turns it into a different order entirely.
The Atlas
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