What’s The Difference Between Americano And Filter Coffee?

To people who don't know too much about coffee, a cup of filter coffee may look the same as a coffee shop Americano. However, the two really couldn't be any more different. 

The fundamental difference is simple: while Americano is made by adding water to espresso, filter coffee is made with a completely different brewing method. I spoke to two expert baristas to learn more about the two drinks and how they prepare them.

What Is An Americano? 

An Americano is made by diluting an espresso with hot water. There is no particular guideline on how much hot water to use. Some people claim that a 1:2 espresso to water ratio is a "standard" Americano, while others prefer a "shorter" Americano with a 1:1 ratio. In reality, coffee shops may use a ratio as high as 1:15 depending on the intensity of their espresso and customers' taste.

The long black is a popular drink in Australia and New Zealand that contains the same ingredients as an Americano. However, the method of preparation is different. With an Americano, water is poured over the espresso, while with the long black, it's the other way around.

Be careful when ordering an Americano in Italy. The exact Italian names for an Americano (caffé Americano) and filter coffee (caffé all'americana) are similar.

A popular but unconfirmed belief about the Americano's origin is that it was invented by Italian baristas for American soldiers during the Second World War. The soldiers found standard espressos too bitter and intense for their tastes, as they were used to drinking filter or "drip" coffee back home.

To give them coffee that was more to their taste, baristas served them espresso diluted with hot water. In the USA today, ordering a "black coffee" will get you a cup of black filter coffee, while restaurants and coffee shops in somewhere like the UK are more likely to interpret this as an Americano.

Tibor Hámori is head barista of Gerbeaud Café in Budapest, which has been operating for more than 160 years. He says that to make an Americano, "[he] makes a double espresso and adds extra temperature-controlled (75°C) filtered water". Tibor uses a 1:2 ratio, with a 34g espresso and 68g hot water.

What Is Filter Coffee?

Espresso is made by forcing high-pressure water quickly through fine coffee grounds. Filter coffee, however, is made by pouring hot water over coffee grounds and letting the resulting brew drip through a filter.

Cole Torode is a two time Canadian Barista Champion and two time World Barista Championship Finalist. He's also a buyer at Forward Specialty Green Coffee and Director at Rosso Coffee Roasters in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. 

He says that "filter coffee is brewed using a recipe that's intended for that coffee specifically to achieve a strength and extraction that best showcases its individual expression". Depending on the coffee used (its origin, variety, and how it was processed, for instance), results can vary significantly.

Cole adds that there are a number of ratios and brew methods that you can tweak to alter the flavor of the coffee. There's no set recipe or ratio required for filter coffee, and while it can be enjoyed with milk, this can often mask the more delicate flavors of the coffee.

Tibor points out that the equipment used to brew the coffee will also affect its flavor. "Your filter coffee can be made with an AeroPress, a V60, Kalita, and so on… different equipment means you're getting different coffee at the end."

So, What's The Difference?

"To simplify, an Americano is a diluted espresso whereas a filter coffee is made with an intentional and individual recipe," Cole says. 

He adds that from his experience, customers generally assume that an Americano is "stronger" than filter coffee. However, the concentration of both beverages will depend entirely on the brew ratio, and specifically how much water is used to dilute the Americano.

There are some other points to consider when preparing both beverages.

Different Coffees Suit Different Brewing Methods

Historically, people have associated darker roasts with espresso, while lighter roasts are generally used for filter coffee.

Cole explains that "most cafés will default to making an Americano with their house espresso". He says, however, that when it comes to filter coffee, coffee shops "might have a menu… that clients can pick from, allowing a wider range of experience and availability".

For filter, Cole prefers a Kenyan coffee with high acidity. However, he adds that it "might not be the easiest to work with as espresso, as the acidity will show with great intensity, but this is likely easier to tone back and bring clarity to a filter coffee".

Cole says that to his knowledge, there's no single recipe or ratio for preparing an Americano. He points out that it will be up to the café to decide what the final volume will be. "At some coffee shops, [the Americano] might be 40g of liquid espresso added to 250ml of water," he says.

"A café will rarely change this recipe based on the coffee they use, as they generally serve a beverage of a consistent size when a customer orders an Americano." 

Tibor feels that the more subtle traits of a coffee can be better showcased through a filter coffee. "I prefer fruitier and more interesting coffees for filter… I choose a good washed Ethiopian, Kenyan, Guatemalan or Panamanian coffee," he says. 

"These coffees can have less body and slightly more acidity, which means in the cup you can taste tea-like and sweet ripe fruit notes." For an espresso (and therefore an Americano), Tibor prefers to use sweet, chocolatey coffees with a heavy body, and says he often chooses natural processed Brazilians, Colombians, or Ethiopians.

Consistency Matters

Cole says that espresso (and therefore Americanos) is hard to standardize or control. "I believe espresso is one of the most challenging coffees to make consistently and at a high standard of quality," he says. 

"It's such a volatile brewing method and the control really doesn't lie in the barista's hands. We can be as consistent [with the process] as humanly possible and create very different espressos.

"Temperature, humidity, workload, [machine] cleanliness, and [a number of other factors] will all dictate how an espresso tastes. This leads to very varied results, even among the world's best baristas. Unless we use state-of-the-art machines that back up our efforts, it's challenging to deliver consistent espresso," he says. 

However, Cole adds that if the barista uses an espresso machine with flow profiling technology, "they'll have more control over the espresso and its brewing process".

While brewing filter coffee can also produce inconsistent results, it is generally more forgiving as a brewing method. "The resulting beverage is much lower in concentration (approximately eight to ten times [less] concentrated than an average shot of espresso)," Cole says.

"Any error in an espresso is magnified because of the concentration, where it can be slightly subdued in a filter coffee."

The bottom line and the difference between the two beverages is simple. An Americano is made by diluting espresso, whereas filter coffee is made with a completely different brewing process. 

However, some people who are less experienced coffee drinkers might assume that they're the same thing. So, if customers enter your coffee shop and seem confused about the differences between the two beverages, educate them. It might just be the first step they take into the world of specialty coffee.

About The Author :- Janice Chinna Kanniah is a writer and editor. She is based in Johannesburg, South Africa

Thanks to Janice Chinna Kanniah / Perfect Daily Grind / PerfectDailyGrind
https://perfectdailygrind.com/2020/09/whats-the-difference-between-americano-and-filter-coffee/

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Free Your Strategy From Annual Planning

When Your Strategy Is Shackled To The Annual Planning Process, You Lose A Uniquely Powerful Management Tool.

Something happens to successful companies as they grow into behemoths ruling the corporate world: Their strategies are taken prisoner by bureaucratic planning processes, internal battles for scarce resources, external skirmishes to win market share, and intense short-term performance pressures. This creates a void that they fill with lofty statements about their vision, mission, purpose, and goals, while their people are left to grapple with the huge gap between such statements and their own everyday experience. Fifty years after strategy went mainstream in the corporate world, it seems to have lost its power to drive smarter, faster decision making and execution.

For example, consider the following strategy statements from five of the world’s top airlines:

•  We are committed to providing every citizen of the world with the highest quality air travel to the widest selection of destinations possible.

• We are dedicated to providing air transportation services of the highest quality and to maximizing returns for the benefit of its shareholders and employees.

• [We aim] to be recognized worldwide as the airline of choice.

• We exist to deliver the world’s best in-flight experience.

• We fly our customers at convenient times to the best located airports across the world.

Can you name the airline behind each one? More importantly, can you imagine these strategies helping their respective organizations produce consistently better decisions or execution than their peers? Or can you say anything, based on these statements, about how these companies are trying to differentiate themselves, either by who they serve, what they offer, or what makes them able to do what they do better than anyone else? You’ve likely answered no to all three of these questions—and so have I.

The statements above are really just compromises, bromides, and non-strategies. And that’s because strategy in these companies has been imprisoned by their annual planning processes, the real objective of which is to achieve agreement on how to divvy up corporate resources, rather than make choices that profitably differentiate their enterprises. Then, being somewhat embarrassed that “here’s how we’ve cut the cake this year” probably doesn’t fit staff or shareholders’ idea of a strategy, they cobble together something that seems just “big picture” and aspirational enough, while also being agreeable to pretty much anyone.

This is a lost opportunity, because there is no better tool than strategy to increase a company’s agility and coherence. Budgeting is too oriented to the short term, whereas visions have the opposite problem. Metrics and targets can have both a short- and long-term timeframe, but they tend to promote growth at the expense of profitability (or vice versa) and the enterprise at the expense of its parts (or the other way around). When these other tools—budgeting, visions, metrics, targets, and others—become de facto substitutes for strategy, companies end up with plenty of aspiration, actions, and accountability, but little direction and differentiation. This is a recipe for mediocre decision making and execution, which is exactly what we see from companies with “strategies” such as those of the airlines above.

How can business leaders rehabilitate strategy as a positive, driving force in their companies? The first step is to separate strategy from plan. These are very different animals. A plan describes how you intend to implement the strategy choices you’ve made. It’s a commitment to action, resources, and performance. But a strategy is the result of making choices that answer these fundamental questions:

• What  businesses should we be in, and how do we add value to them?
• Who are our target customers, and what is our value proposition to them?
• What capabilities make us best at how we add value to our individual businesses and how well they deliver their value propositions?

It is all-too-common to have many plans and very little strategy, because strategy is difficult. Those questions above may be easy in concept, but I see many companies struggle to find distinct and compelling answers to them. (Go ahead: Answer these questions for your business, and then compare your answers to a colleague’s. Chances are, they’re not the same.)

The next step is to decouple strategy development from plan formulation. When formulating plans, the focus is on efficiency and internal matters (“what actions, resources, and performance will we commit to?”). Developing strategy is, in contrast, a creative act. It requires innovation, external focus, and significant iteration. If the two processes are mashed together, plan formulation will usually dominate and strategy will be relegated to high-level packaging.

The  final key to unlocking the true power of strategy is to free it from the calendar. The typical strategic planning process happens at a certain time each year, with a kickoff and a wrap-up. This is fine for updating annual plans, but it is horrible for strategy—because it guarantees that the big strategic issues and opportunities are addressed superficially within the arbitrary confines of the annual planning calendar, or that they are tackled haphazardly throughout the year. Either way, annual planning is not producing meaningful strategies.

Strategy cannot wait for the planning process to roll around each year, because it should never be static: The future may be uncertain, but you can be sure that your customers and competitors aren’t sitting idly by. To ensure that your company is always moving forward, strategy development must be an ongoing, deliberate, and purposeful process that is governed by a rolling agenda of strategic issues and opportunities.

When strategy is incarcerated in annual-planning prison, business leaders lose a uniquely powerful tool for driving business model innovation; for reconciling the short term and long term, growth and profitability, and whole and parts; and even for driving better execution. I hope you will join me in a clarion call to business leaders everywhere: “Free strategy!”

Thanks Ken Favaro / Strategy Business / Strategy-Business
https://www.strategy-business.com/blog/Free-Your-Strategy-from-Annual-Planning

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Four Of My Biggest Mistakes As A New CEO And The Single Reason I Made Them

The year? 2013. The place? Likeable Media. I had just stepped in as CEO. When I co-founded the company six years prior, I had about 7 years of real life working experience-- and I felt horribly unprepared to lead a fast growing agency like Likeable. I did it anyway-- while Dave served as CEO, I figured out the financials behind running a business with triple digit growth year to year. I gained confidence, and pushed through the pain of growth. Now, I was stepping into the Chief Executive Officer role. Once again, I felt unprepared, but this time, it was much more public. As the face of the company, I made some key mistakes.

1. Not Wanting To Rock The Boat: Our Chairman and former CEO built a great business. It was working, so why wouldn't I just keep following in his footsteps? After all, it made things a lot easier-- especially since I was married to him! I could just continue along, and not rock the boat. There was only one real issue with this-- I saw a storm coming, and I didn't react. Social media was getting much more competitive-- every agency and their mother was a "social media expert". We grew because of timing and because our CEO had launched a New York Times bestselling book about social media-- but the timing had passed, and social media had changed so quickly that the book needed to be updated. And yet, I just sort of rested on those laurels until it became a much bigger problem.

2. Not Setting Boundaries: When we founded the company, Dave was a larger than life leader. People were in awe of him-- and I was the approachable one. As we kept adding employees, I became their confidant and their friend. This was a classic mistake in any leadership position, but when I became CEO, it became impossible. My nickname in the office? "Cool Mom", named after the character Regina George's mom from Mean Girls! I had very little boundaries set, I shared personal information with staff members, and I knew way too much about them. Totally inappropriate, and it became increasingly difficult to make hiring and firing decisions when the personal was blended with the professional. 

3. Not Giving Direct Feedback: I danced around feedback a lot. One of my best qualities is the ability to make everyone I know feel good about themselves. But when giving feedback, that worked to my disadvantage. I was indirect, and danced around feedback for clients and employees. Needless to say, employees felt great, but my feedback never resonated. The moment I realized this about myself, I became obsessed with delivering (and receiving) feedback well-- and this video was the best resource that I found to help solve this for me and for many subsequent women that I've mentored.

4. Not Firing Fast Enough: I believe that you always know when a person isn't right for your organization-- it's just hidden in the way back of your gut behind every desire to make things work. I once tried to calculate the amount I've spent on the payroll of people during their tenure from the time I knew they shouldn't be at my company anymore to the time that I acted on not having them at my company anymore, and let's just say it was a handsome sum.

In each of these scenarios, I didn't trust my gut. Whether I refused to listen to my inner voice about the impending social media storm, or who I should keep at my company, the reality was I knew exactly what to do at the right time, each and every time. So why wasn't I listening? The answer was simple: I was afraid of not being likeable. My husband wouldn't like me if I changed his vision. The staff wouldn't like me if I set boundaries. Clients wouldn't like me if I gave them feedback. And nobody likes the person who fires them! The fear of not being likeable and living up to my company name was keeping me from being a strong leader. And so, I had to change the narrative.

It was likeable to be direct. It was likeable to have people know where you stand. It was likeable to deliver tough messages kindly. It was likeable to go with my gut. It's true, I had lots of bumps and missteps along the way-- I've fumbled my way through many a work scenario. But abandoning the concept that being likeable meant pleasing everyone is the key factor in my success today.

About the Author :- Carrie Kerpen is CEO and co-founder of Likeable Media, an award-winning digital agency that achieved Crain’s 6th “Best Place To Work in NYC.” She is the author of WORK IT: Secrets For Success From The Boldest Women In Business and the host of the popular podcast All the Social Ladies.

Thanks to Carrie Kerpen / Forbes / Forbes.com
https://www.forbes.com/sites/carriekerpen/2016/04/05/four-of-my-biggest-mistakes-as-a-new-ceo-and-the-single-reason-i-made-them/?__s=sopz4qr4xzjoaybanyxc#68da5f20157d

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