Frappé coffee

For other uses, see Frappé.

Frappe Coffee as produced by a hand mixer.

Frappé coffee (also Greek frappé or Café frappé) ([φραπές, frapés] Error: {{Lang-xx}}: text has italic markup (help)) is a foam-covered iced coffee drink made from instant coffee (generally, spray-dried). It is very popular in Greece and Cyprus, especially during the summer, but has now spread to other countries. The frappé became a hallmark of the post-war outdoor Greek coffee culture.

Name

In French, when describing a drink, the word frappé means chilled; and indeed there was an American dish called café frappé, a sort of coffee granita. However, in the name café frappé, frappé is interpreted as 'shaken'.

History

Frappé dates back to the 1957 International Trade Fair in Thessaloniki. The representative of the Nestlé company, Yannis Dritsas, was exhibiting a new product for children, a chocolate beverage produced instantly by mixing it with milk and shaking it in a shaker. Dritsas' employee Dimitris Vakondios was looking for a way to have his usual instant coffee during his break but he could not find any hot water, so he mixed the coffee with cold water and a shaker.

This improvised experiment established this popular Greek beverage. Frappé has been marketed chiefly by Nestlé and is among the most popular drinks in Greece. More recently, Kraft, under the Jacobs label, have launched their own brand of frappé. Frappé has been called the national coffee of Greece, and is available at virtually all cafés.

Preparation

The coffee can be made either with a cocktail shaker or an appropriate mixer (e.g. a hand mixer). One or two teaspoons of coffee, sugar (to taste) and a little water are blended to form a foam, which is poured into a tall glass. To this is added cold water and ice cubes, and, optionally, milk - typically evaporated milk. The glass is served with a drinking straw.

Frothy top

The spray-dried instant coffee contains nearly no oil, just tiny particles (coffee solids), some molecules responsible for flavor and taste, and of course caffeine. When dissolved, spray-dried coffee forms a simpler and more stable colloid relative to traditionally brewed coffee. This enables creation of the characteristic thick frothy layer at the top of the coffee. This layer appears similar to crema, the foam found in espresso, but is much thicker and the composition is different. It can be characterized mainly as a three phase colloid where tiny bubbles are held together by the coffee solids.

The absence of oil (or the significantly lower oil content compared to traditionally brewed coffee) makes the system more stable and the bubbles do not collapse with the same ease as in crema. Soon after the foam is created, a process of thickening takes place where water molecules are constantly pushed out of the frothy mixture. The water is pushed out due to drainage occurring due to pressure differentials along the foam septum. Higher viscosity will retard the phenomenon, and that is the reason that the addition of sugar will create a better foam. The phenomenon continues until bubbles come very close together and the foam almost solidifies. This process can take between 2 minutes to 10 minutes and depends strongly on the agitation process during mixing. As the bubbles come closer together they will slowly start to coalescence and create bigger bubbles. According to the Laplace equation, variation in bubble size, will result in faster collapsing of the bubbles since the bigger bubbles will consume the smaller ones. Hand-mixers create smaller and more uniformly sized bubbles. The smaller bubble size reduces the bubble pressure gradient and forms a much longer lasting foam.

The presence of oil (a hydrophobic agent) can significantly accelerate the collapsing process localized reduction in the foam elasticity, resulting in the creation of a lighter foam with average bubble diameter larger than 4 mm. This is the reason it is not possible to make a good frappé in many countries, unless one can find spray-dried coffee (which is actually generally less expensive than freeze-dried instant coffee). The utilization of a hand mixer makes possible the creation of finer bubbles which increases the time that the foam can last. The best frappé coffees are often held to be those with the smallest bubbles and a thickness of about 1.5 inches to 2 inches (30 mm to 50 mm) of foam.

Frappé variations

Frappé is available in three degrees of sweetness, determined by the amount of sugar and coffee used. These are: glykós (γλυκός, pronounced [ɣliˈkos], "sweet", 2 teaspoons of coffee and 4 teaspoons of sugar); métrios (μέτριος, "medium", 2 teaspoons of coffee and 2 teaspoons of sugar); and a skétos (σκέτος, "plain", 2 teaspoons of coffee and no sugar). All varieties may be served with evaporated milk (με γάλα Greek pronunciation: [me ˈɣala]), in which case they may be called in slang φραπόγαλο (frapógalo, Greek pronunciation: [fraˈpoɣalo], "frappé-milk"), or without. Sometimes, frappé is served without any water (besides the water used in the foam) and milk is used instead. This variation is most commonly found in Cyprus.

Kahlúa, Baileys Irish Cream or other liqueurs are sometimes used for additional variation, as well as chocolate milk. Many restaurants add a ball of vanila ice-cream into their frappe instead of milk. Though not technically "frappé" (since they are not shaken), some variations are stirred with a spoon, creating a slightly different texture and, according to some, taste.

Frappé outside Greece

Frappé is also consumed in Cyprus, where the Greek Cypriots adopted the frappé into their culture, in Albania, the Republic of Macedonia, Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, parts of Turkey, Ukraine, Poland and Romania. In recent years Balkan immigrants in Greece have taken frappé to their homelands, where it has been adopted with some differences. In Bulgaria, Coca-cola is sometimes used instead of water (possibly the inspiration for Coca-Cola Blāk), in Denmark, cold milk is often used instead of tap water, and in Serbia, ice-cream is added.

While Starbucks markets a line of drinks under the name Frappuccino, they are not directly related, evident by the fact that Starbucks in Greece offers both Frappuccino and Greek-style "Frappe" (written by Starbucks without the accent).