What Is Blonde Espresso?

Blonde espresso is espresso made from coffee roasted lighter than a typical espresso blend. The name comes from Starbucks, which sells a Blonde Espresso Roast as an alternative to its standard, darker espresso, and the word has spread far enough that people now use it for any light-roast shot.

A name, not a roast level

There is no industry scale on which blonde is a step. It is a brand's label for the lighter end of its own range, and one company's blonde can sit darker than another roaster's ordinary medium. What it reliably tells you is the direction: lighter than that chain's usual espresso, which is roasted quite dark. The physics of roasting less far are the same whatever the bag calls it, and our light roast coffees page covers what that trade involves.

What it tastes like

Roasting less leaves more of the coffee's acidity and sugars intact and produces fewer of the heavy, smoky compounds that dark roasting creates. So a blonde shot is:

• Less bitter, and noticeably smoother to drink straight.
• Brighter, with citrus or fruit where a dark shot tastes of cocoa and toast.
• Sweeter, in a light, caramel way.
• Lighter in body, so it feels thinner in the mouth.

People who find chain espresso harsh often prefer blonde immediately. People who like a heavy, chocolatey shot often find it thin.

Why it exists

Large chains built their espresso on dark roasts because a dark roast tastes the same from one shop to the next and cuts through a lot of milk and syrup. That consistency came at a cost: many customers found the coffee burnt or bitter. Starbucks began selling a lighter Blonde Roast filter coffee in 2012 and later added a blonde espresso, aimed at exactly those customers. It was a response to a complaint about the house style rather than a new idea about coffee.

Does blonde espresso have more caffeine?

Slightly, and not for the reason people assume. Roasting does not burn off much caffeine. What changes is density: a lighter-roasted bean has lost less mass and is heavier for its size. When espresso is dosed by volume, as it often is in busy cafes, a scoop of lighter beans holds a little more coffee and so a little more caffeine. Starbucks itself lists its blonde shots as carrying a little more caffeine than its standard ones.

Weighed out gram for gram, the difference largely disappears. The general numbers are in how much caffeine is in coffee.

In milk drinks

This is where blonde divides opinion most. Its softer flavour lets milk taste sweeter and makes a latte gentle and rounded. It also has less intensity to push through milk, so in a large latte or with syrup the coffee can almost disappear. As a rule it shines in smaller drinks, a flat white or a cortado, and fades in the largest ones.

Ordering it

At chains that offer it, blonde can usually be substituted into any espresso drink, often at no extra cost, by asking for it by name. At an independent cafe the word may mean nothing, but many already pull a lighter espresso than the chains do. Ask what they are using; you may be getting something close to blonde by default.

Making it at home

Buy a light or medium-light roast labelled as suitable for espresso, or a capsule made for it, such as the Starbucks Blonde capsule for Vertuo. Lighter roasts are harder to extract, so a few adjustments help:

• Grind finer than you would for a dark roast.
• Use hotter water, toward the top of the normal range. The reasoning is in water temperature for coffee.
• Let the shot run a little longer if it tastes sour.

Sourness is the sign of an under-extracted light shot, not of a bad bean, and it is almost always fixed by grinding finer.