What is gold cup extraction? The target of any coffee brewing is to achieve an extraction rate of 18%, 22%.

Professional coffee knowledge exchange More coffee bean information Please pay attention to coffee workshop (Weixin Official Accounts cafe_style)

coffee extraction| What is the standard for espresso extraction? SCAE Gold Cup Extraction Theory

Today we are going to discuss coffee's so-called "Gold Cup Theory." Some people don't like the Gold Cup theory because the name seems to imply that as long as this criterion is met, it is "super good coffee." Actually, I agree that coffee that doesn't conform to the Gold Cup theory is delicious, but it's a bit strange to say that we can completely ignore the Gold Cup theory. Perhaps it is called "extraction theory". Perhaps we have no opinions. In fact, what we want to talk about is extraction.

Coffee beans ground into coffee powder, not everything can be dissolved in water, we try again, again violence, at most can only extract about 30%. But that 30% contains flavors we don't like, so most coffee people would probably agree that our goal is to extract 20%. If we think about it a little bit more up and down, it's about

18% -- 22%

It's an acceptable range. So, no matter how we brew coffee, hand brew, match style, or even espresso, the final goal is 18%-22% extraction.

You probably know how to increase the extraction rate of coffee (and vice versa), we will give you a few ways to improve the extraction rate:

Increase the boiling water temperature

Grind the beans a little.

Longer brewing time

Stir harder.

Anyway, the goal is 18 - 22%, and every time you brew coffee, try to get the extraction rate into this range, and that's it, and that's the point of the Gold Cup theory.

What? No more?

I really want to say it. That's it. But you might have a problem, which is we make coffee, how do we know the extraction rate? It seemed to me that this was a very simple question, and that it was the beginning of all trouble.

What the extraction rate is is easy to explain. We want to know exactly how much of the coffee powder goes into our coffee, and that's naturally

Coffee extraction = coffee powder weight before brewing-coffee powder weight after brewing

And the extraction rate is

Extraction rate = coffee extraction quantity/coffee powder weight before brewing

Remember (again) that between 18% and 22% you are in heaven, less than 18% is called "underextraction" and more than 22% is called "overextraction." Is that a problem? Okay, no problem. We'll go up here... What? Is there a problem? Where there is a problem, brewing coffee powder weight is of course a quantity before boiling (remember strictly speaking is "ground" weight, but so nitpicking things we talk about later). The weight after brewing is, of course, the weight of the coffee grounds after brewing.

Wait, smart guy, did you notice? Coffee grounds are actually ground coffee, with some water attached to it. What if we just want to know how heavy the rest of the coffee is? It's "simple", just think of a way to make it dry, and then measure it after it's dry. And so, in the past, people have come up with great ideas

"oven drying"

Every time you finish brewing coffee, the coffee grounds left over are dried, dried, and then taken out to measure the weight…

So, you make a cup of coffee, you wait for the oven to bake it, you measure it, you take out your computer, you press it, and finally... what, a little higher? So you adjust it again, you rinse it again, you dry it in the oven, you calculate it again... What? It's too low... At this point, I don't think anyone in their right mind would want to do it all over again.

So, we're going to think of something else. Now we just need to remember one thing: any coffee brewing, the goal is to achieve

18% - 22%

extraction rate.

。