Discussion on brewing methods and skills of Coffee

What do you emphasize?

I think the specific way to start this discussion is to review the potential taste of coffee that we have emphasized in the past. Most of the existing cup scoring tables are evaluating raw coffee beans, but here our scoring criteria should be out of this purpose. therefore, we take the following common characteristics into consideration:

1. Sweetness 2. Acidity 3. Taste 4. Sense of balance 5. Aroma 6. Flavor 7. Yu Yun

Extraction has always been a thorny issue, but I believe that consistent extraction is very important. You might think that the degree of extraction is closely related to the particle size distribution of bean grinders and coffee powder. But in fact, no matter what degree of extraction you set, we will be affected by some factors when brewing, and there is a deep relationship between the two: the particle size of coffee powder and the contact time between coffee powder and water. The particle size of coffee powder affects the surface area of coffee powder in contact with water, thus determining the dissolved matter and extraction rate in coffee, regardless of the brewing method. It is necessary to strike a balance between the grinding particle size of coffee powder and the contact time of coffee powder in water. To put it simply, if you use a French filter kettle to make coffee, we can try it with a variety of grinding thickness. as long as the contact time between water and powder is properly controlled, you can get a good cup of coffee.

What you might think about at this moment is that the so-called "right cooking time" hedges the effect of cooking temperature. If the coffee powder particles are ground very coarsely, then the soaking time in the French filter kettle will be relatively longer, so will the average cooking temperature be pulled down? In fact, temperature has always been an elusive factor in coffee brewing. If we only discuss the brewing temperature of Espresso, everything would be simple, but if we expand the range to siphon coffee, hand brewing, etc., the exact temperature performance seems to be much more uncertain, but temperature on the extraction has the so-called "Force effect", which provides the "energy" needed to enter the dissolution. In general, the higher the temperature, the more extraction is obtained. In the concept of "extraction", every chemical has its own temperature threshold for extraction. the best example is that even for lightly roasted coffee beans, as long as the extraction temperature is raised to close to the boiling point, there will be bitterness; on the contrary, we reduce the extraction temperature to about 80 degrees, so that coffee has a reasonable chemical extraction, resulting in a cup of rich and good thickness, very simple sweetness, but lack of complexity and personality. Of course, this experiment also emphasizes the effect of temperature on the acidity of coffee.

Temperature is often considered to be a factor discussed separately from the cooking method, and its influence on cooking skills is far greater than that on cooking itself. The temperature of brewing is determined by the temperature of the water at the beginning of brewing and the heat of the water when it reaches coffee. Take Espresso as an example, assuming that the effluent temperature is the same, slow, strong and thin coffee pressed powder must be lower than the fast, loose and thick coffee pressed powder in brewing temperature, so if the thermal insulation of the boiler or outlet is poor, then the slow Shot will have more serious temperature loss.

What we emphasize here is that it is not practical to assume an ideal cooking technique, and the cooking temperature is not really controlled during the cooking process. Except for a special cooking method-Syphon, it is strange that Syphon cooking does not have a very in-depth discussion on the temperature curve. Many people do not like the taste of Syphon, or are less moved by it, but in fact, Syphon is one of the many ways of brewing coffee, a few of which add heat after brewing water, and very few of them can maintain a stable temperature during the 1-4 minute brewing process. In addition, what we are talking about is "stirring". On a theoretical level, stirring reminds us of "inconsistent" and "unrepeatable". What we usually think of is to manually move coffee powder particles with a tool, just like Syphon stirring, but I've always been skeptical about magical stirring techniques in any way, because it's not just your tuner that stirs. When the water rushes into the coffee, the water itself is a kind of agitation that makes the coffee particles move, and the movement of the coffee powder particles will lead to more extraction, the same in the hand, how and where the water is injected, no matter how high the injection will affect the movement of the water, and indirectly affect the extraction behavior. Once again, "stirring" is not so much a function of cooking as a function of skill. From the above, we can know that instead of saying that the cooking method determines the cooking process, we should say that the artificial skill of cooking determines the process.