Mitch Monaghan lives and breathes coffee. It’s his passion. As a Nespresso ambassador, it’s his job to inform and educate coffee lovers about the finer details of creating cafe-style coffee at home and demystify the process. 

“The piccolo is my go-to coffee first thing in the morning,” Monaghan says. “The piccolo is coffee and milk in perfect balance. Half coffee, half milk in a small glass or cup. Here’s how you do it. Firstly, choose a Nespresso Vertuo capsule – Altissio is perfect. Insert into your Nespresso Vertuo Next coffee machine. Extract an espresso to half fill the cup, then pour frothed milk over the top. Simple. It looks like a small latte, but a latte has one-part coffee to two-parts milk, so a piccolo has a stronger flavour. If you want to go stronger again, start with the espresso shot as you would for a piccolo and just add a dollop of milk froth. That’s a macchiato.”

According to Monaghan, making a cappuccino is all about thirds – a third espresso, a third hot milk and a third thick, creamy froth. Generally, Australian cafes serve coffees that are 200ml or more. To recreate this cafe-style at home, he suggests opting for a double-shot espresso base to get the coffee to milk ratio in the right proportion.

“A flat white is similar to a cappuccino but without the froth, which means it ends up being one-part coffee and two-parts milk, like a latte, but with less froth than a latte,” Monaghan says. “So they all have the same amount of coffee, but a cappuccino has the strongest flavour of the three.”