What Is a Lungo Coffee?

A lungo is an espresso pulled long. The dose of coffee stays the same, the machine keeps pushing water through it for longer, and the cup ends up holding roughly twice the liquid of a normal shot. Lungo is simply Italian for long.

What pulling it long actually does

An espresso stops when the cup holds about twice the weight of the dry coffee. A lungo keeps going to three or four times. That extra water does not just dilute the shot; it keeps dissolving compounds out of the same puck for another fifteen or twenty seconds.

The order in which those compounds leave matters. Acids come out first, sugars next, and the heavier bitter compounds last. A lungo reaches further along that sequence than an espresso does, so it tastes thinner, less sweet and more bitter at the finish, with less body in the mouth. The shorter end of the same scale, and the double shot most cafes build on, are covered in what a doppio is.

A lungo is not an americano

The two are confused constantly because both are longer black drinks made on an espresso machine. The difference is where the water goes.

• Lungo. All the water passes through the coffee. Longer extraction, more bitterness, a single stream into the cup.
• Americano. A normal espresso is pulled, then hot water is added afterwards. The coffee is extracted at espresso length and simply diluted, which is why it tastes cleaner and rounder at the same volume. See the americano against a latte.

If a lungo tastes harsh to you, an americano of the same size is almost always the better order.

Caffeine

Slightly more than an espresso from the same dose, and not by much. Caffeine dissolves early and easily, so most of it is already in the cup by the time a normal espresso stops. The extra water picks up a little more, not twice as much. Size is the bigger variable, and a double espresso carries more caffeine than a single lungo. The wider numbers are in how much caffeine is in coffee.

The lungo button on a capsule machine

Capsule machines print lungo on a button, and that is where most people meet the word. It works the same way: the machine sends more water through the same capsule. Nespresso also sells capsules designed for that longer pour, and its larger gran lungo size sits above it at around 150ml. Pulling a short espresso capsule as a lungo is a common reason a pod coffee tastes bitter, because the capsule was never dosed for that much water.

Pulling a good one at home

• Keep the dose, change the yield. Weigh the coffee as for an espresso and stop at around three times that weight in the cup.
• Grind a touch coarser. A longer pour through an espresso-fine puck runs too slowly and over-extracts. Opening the grind a step keeps the total time sensible, somewhere under a minute.
• Choose the coffee for it. Medium roasts hold up best. A very dark roast turns ashy when pulled long, and a light roast can taste hollow.
• Warm a bigger cup. The drink has more surface area and loses heat quickly in a cold one.

Any espresso machine can do it, and a scale does more for consistency here than any setting on the machine.

Who it is for

Someone who likes espresso but wants something to sip for longer than a minute, without milk and without it becoming a watery mug. It rewards a coffee chosen for it, and it is unforgiving of one that was not, which is why so many people try a lungo once and go back to an americano.