Talking about Coffee: home-made Coffee skills Series-Water injection skills

Pick out the beans, get the equipment ready, and finally make coffee.

Since instant coffee powder does not need to separate dregs, it all depends on the number of teaspoons of coffee powder. By contrast, the public will find the hand-brewed coffee to be filtered complicated and complicated. In fact, each packet of coffee beans, only need to find a suitable thick young degree, and then brew, can be as simple as watering flowers.

18g coffee powder mixed with 300ml water

The most common method is to extract 18 grams of coffee powder in a ratio of about 300 milliliters of water. First of all, inject 30 to 40 milliliters of water in the middle of the funnel. After 20 to 30 seconds of "steaming" (I still don't understand why this action is called steaming), divide it into three to four sections, each with 60 to 80 milliliters, and inject the remaining water. The whole process will be completed in two to three minutes. In the meantime, avoid wetting the filter paper without coffee powder, otherwise water will be lost from the channel formed by the periphery of pressed powder.

Another kind of more difficult to use, is in the limited time (usually in two minutes) keep making a circle to inject water, until the end of the 300ml "continuous water method". Beginners often "live and live" and inject water too slowly, or they are afraid that the current will be interrupted and it will be finished too soon. All kinds of hand-punching pots, that is, the thick young (flow control) for the water column, came into being.

The Taiwanese translation book "Talent starts a course and teaches you how to make good Coffee" brings together the brewing methods of more than 20 coffee shops in Japan. Many people follow the guidelines in the book, but the taste of coffee is worse, and some readers find the suggestions in the book varied and difficult to understand. As a matter of fact, what is described in this book is just like a martial arts novel, which only has the style and lacks the formula. According to the picture and practice, only its shape but lack of reality.

It is easier to make coffee than to practice martial arts, and the so-called formula is only one sentence: "taste it, but don't overdo it."

"smell it, but don't overdo it."

What sounds easy and natural, there are thousands of ways to do it. The gesture of pouring water and making a circle can be divided into counterclockwise, large and small circles, making a cross, drawing an M, and so on. In fact, whether it is a picture symbol or a "gluttonous snake", you can inject water into a coffee pressed powder in the hope of washing out the taste of each powder. Metaphorically, the coffee powder in the funnel is like a tea bag in a bathtub. We pour water with a hose in the hope that each tea bag will taste evenly together. To do this, you must first wet all the tea bags at the same time. This is the goal of the first water injection (or "stuffy steam" at all).

However, if you look at the funnel with a microscope, you will find that the size of the coffee powder is different. It is equivalent to the tea bag in the bathtub, some as big as a tub, and some as thin as dumplings. Even if the extraction starts at the same starting line, by the time the big one tastes enough, the thin one has gone too far (excessive extraction). In order to avoid this phenomenon, apart from high-quality bean grinders, we can only use water to pull larger coffee grains to taste as soon as possible before the fine powder is over-extracted. So when the second water injection begins, the impact force is very important.

But what happens if you work too hard? Apart from running out of water too quickly, resulting in insufficient extraction time, some of the water will flow away with the cracks in the pressed powder or the edge of the funnel, both of which will lead to the weak taste of the coffee and the imbalance between sour and bitter.

In the past three issues, the author briefly described the main points of making hand-made coffee. I hope readers can enjoy the fun of fine coffee at home. If you have any questions, you are welcome to come to our store to share.

Patrick Tam (owner of the boutique coffee shop Knockbox, approved barista of the American Fine Coffee Association and European Fine Coffee Association, CQI recognized cup tester, Cup of Excellence's first Hong Kong judge)