What do you need to pay attention to when cooking by hand? How to judge the degree of grinding, powder quantity and freshness?

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What do you need to pay attention to when cooking by hand? Judge the degree of grinding, powder quantity, freshness?

For a hand filter cup with a paper filter, the ideal grinding is about 500 to 600 microns, but it must be adjusted according to three key points:

According to the experience of the actual taste

If the coffee is bitter and the tongue has a feeling of "dry", it usually means that the coffee is ground too fine and the extraction is a little too much; on the other hand, if the coffee is light or feels a little "watery", it is probably too coarse and not enough to extract.

According to the amount of powder

The suitable thickness for brewing one or two cups of coffee may be too fine if it is used to brew a large pot (5, 6 cups or more), because increasing the number of cups will increase the amount of coffee powder, increase the thickness of the powder, and increase the resistance of water to pass through. as a result, the contact time between water and coffee powder will be prolonged. So when the amount of bubbling increases, the size of the grinding should be slightly enlarged.

According to the freshness

Beans that are too fresh should be slightly thicker to grind, while beans with poor freshness should be ground finer. This is because when coffee particles come into contact with hot water, they will release internal gas and produce foam; most of the foam will float on the liquid surface, forming "coffee flowers", but some of them will be mixed inside the coffee mud bed, increasing the hindrance to the passage of water, thus prolonging the contact time between water and coffee powder. The more fresh the beans are and the more bubbles there are, the more obvious the blocking phenomenon will be. Therefore, it is a common practice for experts to adjust the grinding thickness appropriately according to the freshness of coffee. However, how to set the criteria for determining the freshness of coffee? Here, I will provide my practice in the May 4th Coffee Club for readers' reference. I usually only classify beans not more than three days after roasting as "extremely fresh", beans more than seven or eight days after baking as "less fresh", and those in between as "normal". If the "normal" bean chooses the grinding scale of "4", then in the other two cases, one chooses "4.5" and the other chooses "3.5".