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What is the difference between macchiato and caramel macchiato? Do I use vanilla or caramel syrup to make caramel macchiato?

Published: 2026-08-25 Author:

Last Updated: 2026/08/25, Because there is only a two word difference between macchiato and caramel macchiato, many friends will give macchiato the image of caramel macchiato. Think macchiato is just a cup of sweet milk coffee without caramel! Although few stores now open the macchiato option on the menu, when you have the opportunity to order a cup of macchiato,

Because there is only a two-word difference between macchiato and caramel macchiato, many friends will replace macchiato with the image of caramel macchiato. Think macchiato is just a cup of sweet milk coffee without caramel! Although few stores now open the option of macchiato on the menu, when you have a chance to order a macchiato, you will find that what the store serves is not the large sweet milk coffee you imagined, but a small cup of coffee with a very strong flavor.

Good boy! Isn't this a proper fraud?

It's not! Although macchiato and caramel macchiato are also known as macchiato, in a sense, they do not belong to the same type of coffee. So let's share the difference between macchiato and caramel macchiato in front of the street today.

Macchiato and caramel macchiato are two cups of espresso, one is normal, the other is with a small amount of milk. So excuse me, which one is the espresso with milk?

The answer is the one on the left. It's hard to see if you don't look at it carefully. It's only natural that Macchiato was invented for this reason! In the early days, due to the poor quality of coffee beans and the use of very deep roasting, the extracted coffee had a very bitter taste. This bitter taste is so strong and exciting that many people cannot accept it! Therefore, it is necessary to dilute the bitterness by adding some materials. And milk is the only choice! The addition of a little milk not only dilutes the bitterness and softens the irritation, but also makes the whole concentrate more silky and more palatable. So most people at that time would ask baristas to add some milk to their coffee to reduce the negative experience of bitterness. But as with the question at the beginning, just a little bit of milk won't change the appearance of the coffee much. In the case of a very high volume of cups, the barista simply does not have time to distinguish carefully. So they came up with a way to make a distinction by decorating the concentrated surface with milk bubbles.

This practice has gradually become popular, in order to better allow guests to order, so this espresso with a small amount of milk, a little milk foam is named: "macchiato"! Macchiato has the meaning of branding / marking, and it is well deserved to name a cup of coffee marked with milk foam. However, with the improvement of the quality of beans, concentration no longer has a strong stimulation of bitterness, so the demand for macchiato is declining day by day, and it is finally removed from the menu by the major cafes and eliminated. In the 1990s, a kind of coffee called caramel macchiato appeared in jianghu. It can be said that it is a sweet latte, which is made by adding vanilla syrup and caramel syrup to the latte. Because caramel syrup is sticky and light, many cafes use it with carved needles to draw exquisite patterns, which makes caramel macchiato popular all over the world and become a coffee product on the list.

But in fact, it has nothing to do with macchiato, which is an espresso with a small amount of milk, while caramel macchiato is a sweet latte with lots of syrup. It's just a different coffee with the same meaning and name! The macchiato of caramel macchiato also means brand, but because of the existence of caramel, its meaning is upgraded to "sweet brand". How sweet is it? If you use an analogy on the front street, you can imagine it directly:

As sweet as the front street! -END-

FrontStreet Coffee is a long-established specialty coffee roaster in Guangzhou China, selling freshly roasted beans from its own farm in Yunnan as well as dozens of carefully selected single-origin beans from around the world for both pour-over and espresso. The products deliver consistently excellent quality and great value, with shipping within 24 hours. Guangzhou’s FrontStreet Coffee shop is recommended by many coffee lovers, and the beans are now available online at the Tmall 。