Until now, I always preferred my affogato made so that Elato vanilla is the hero of the dish. My version of this dish adds the coffee to the centre of a well in my vanilla ice cream which has been scooped flat into a wide cappuccino cup. This is the method made famous in Italy by Vivoli Gelataria in Florence, Italy. See https://fb.watch/uPTzxuxZDa/. For me, this type of affogato makes the ice cream the hero of the dish, and the coffee is a essentially a topping. It also minimises the impact of the highly debated but unproven "shocked espresso" (where coffee is cooled too quickly and becomes bitter when poured over ice in an iced coffee). But what if you could optimise the enjoyment of both at the same time?

When I asked Rob McDonald from Gigante Coffee in Melbourne (https://gigante.com.au/) who has exceptional coffee knowledge,  for advice on making the perfect affogato, his answer surprised me. He suggested I first review the latest approaches to enhancing the coffee tasting experience itself, before looking at adding ice cream to that experience.

He directed me to look at recent coffee making innovations from Ona in Marrickville in Sydney (who became famous in 2018 for offering a $16 coffee). Ona have determined that:

1. Coffee flavour is best extracted in the first third of the extraction process;

2. The best extraction takes place if that first third is passed over a cold surface to make the coffee less hot. As a result, they have developed a new form of extraction machinery called the "Paragon," which achieves this result. 

3. The optimum temperature for tastebuds to enjoy coffee, is between 37 and 45 degrees C. No surprises that this is the same optimum temperature for enjoying ice cream - even though ice cream starts at a much colder temperature.

So I started experimenting to see if I could create an affogato that enabled both the ice cream and the coffee to be at between 37 and 45 degrees C.

The results are shown below:

Initial Espresso temperature = 67 degrees C
Initial Ice Cream temperature = - 16 degrees C
Coffee temperature using Vivoli Gelataria scooping method = 20 degrees C
Ice cream temperature using Vivoli Gelataria scooping method = - 5 C
Coffee temperature after pouring an espresso over a 20g scoop of ice cream = 37 degrees C
Ice cream temperature of 20 g scoop of ice cream after pouring espresso over coffee = 10 degrees C 

I found a small scoop of ice cream was better to keep the espresso at a warm and optimal drinking temperature. It also created a balanced experience between drinking the espresso and eating the melted ice cream, as well as avoiding coffee shock as the espresso doesn't get rapidly cold.

Equally, for an iced coffee, I suggest using a smaller amount of ice when pouring over the coffee and for the perfect espresso, adding a bit of cold milk to create a macchiato will also achieve the optimum espresso temperature.

This affogato method created the best of both worlds for me.  However, if you are looking for more of an ice cream experience, then the more ice cream, the better

Let me know what you think about my conclusions with a comment below.

Roz