The Elusive Art of the Mocha
Why the mocha is the most difficult of coffee drinks.
While the mocha (or café mocha, if you desire) is an American creation, its roots are Italian, a new world take on the quite delicious Piedmontese coffee beverage, the Bicerin.
In North America for certain (and to a lesser extent many pockets of other parts of the coffee beverage-drinking world) few have consumed a great mocha, let alone a serviceable one. It is a coffee creation frought with contradictions, its end result usually a meh-inspiring attempt to satiate faux coffee drinkers longing to suckle on their childhood hot chocolate, imaginings of puffy marshmallows and brisk post-fjord-skating fireplaces roaming through their sugar-soaked unconsciousness.
The fault is shared between consumer and maker. The world’s ubiqui-cafes understand nothing of a mocha and, many baristas have suggested to me in person, that creating one is, even by the coffee standards of the inherently mundane, an embarrassment. The mocha world has lost the chocolatey thread, precisely because the focus is on the wrong bean.
A perfect mocha (the best in Toronto is created by the devilishly skilled and often pleasingly unhinged purveyors at Toronto’s Mercury Espresso) is a flawless balance of three elements:
- the flavor of truly outstanding espresso;
- chocolate (in the absolute broadest of senses);
- an uncloying, subtle sweetness.
Part of why a great mocha is so elusive is that there isn’t a widely agreed-upon proportion of the elements. Most high-end coffee spots use one part espresso to two parts of milk, then have their own way of infusing the chocolate, be it cocoa powder or syrup or whatever, really. And even the best mocha merchants stumble at this balance, almost always making the drink far too sweet and less too, well, what a mocha should be.
The perfect mocha first and foremost tastes like coffee. This is absolutely an undeniable fact for those who take coffee seriously. You should drink a mocha and first (always, always first) be hit by the foretaste (the absolute first sense you experience as flavor) of excellent espresso. The nature of the drink will round out that elegant initial bitterness of a fine espresso, but as the first taste expands throughout your head, you should always be thinking coffee.
The graveyards of failed mochas usually take as their foretaste chocolate, with a carload of sugar rushing down the tracks. Ubiquimochas actually don’t taste like espresso at all, which is why they have become wildly popular among the lowest coffee denominator, who craves sweet, sweet, please more sweet, just give me sweet.
The perfect mocha then smooths out on your mouth right away, with the three elements above (and this can’t be overstated) balancing perfectly, with no one element ever attempting to overtake another as your brain processes the taste. Espresso, chocolate, and a very broad yet small sweetness all should intermix in the experience and, upon the swallow, your head and mind are filled with nothing more or less than an always elusive balance.
There is proof that the mocha is among the most difficult coffee beverages to make. As a digression, I always use this term because, while a beautifully done mocha is among my favorite coffee beverages in the world, it is not a “coffee,” as is an espresso or, many would argue, an Americano, and this should always be remembered. The proof of its level of difficulty is that in even the best coffee spots, one barista can make a beautiful one, another a tasteless or sickly-sweet one. It’s part of the acquired skillset of a strong barista, but it’s also a question of artistic interpretation, even among baristas of the same cafe. As another aside, that’s part of the beauty of a top-shelf coffee spot — each barista is an individual, each creating product with variations reflecting their personalities and that’s a great thing.
Finally, a note on chocolate. While it’s not impossible to make a very good mocha using a syrup, it’s awfully hard to do so. The syrups are, obviously, very sweet. Given that the syrup itself doesn’t balance chocolate with sweet, how can one do so in the drink? Many of the best places use a cocoa powder, then add sweetness. Or they don’t. At least they have the option over an almost pure sugar syrup. And, yes, I’ve actually seen coffee spots try to make a mocha with grocery store chocolate syrup, the end result a nightmarish disservice to a wonderful beverage.
