The key points that beginners should pay attention to in the entry of beginners.

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Hand brewed coffee (pour over) can be said to be the most basic and simple way to brew fine coffee. No complicated machinery, just hot water, filter and coffee. In just a few minutes, you can make a fresh cup of coffee.

Hand brewing is also the best part of fine coffee, depending on the adjustment of brewing parameters, including: grind, water temperature, water speed and time, enough to change the final taste of coffee. This article will introduce the basic concepts, so that you can have enough knowledge, after reading this article, you can start to make your first cup of hand-brewed coffee.

Start by grinding the coffee beans into coffee powder before turning them into a cup of coffee. There are two main types of grinders (bean grinders), one is to rely on high-speed rotation of the blade, random way of "splitting" open coffee. The other is to grind the coffee beans systematically in the middle of the disk by rotating two knife disks. Some of these theories will not be discussed here, just remember that fine coffee will only use the latter-the cutter plate, for its controllability and high average.

Coarseness and fineness of grinding will affect the extraction of brewing. By adjusting the gap between the two cutter discs, the finer the gap, the finer the powder will be. The finer the powder, the larger the area where hot water can come into contact with coffee. Hand washing usually uses medium to medium fine powder, probably between fine salt and coarse salt. Don't be too nervous about how to achieve the right size, learning to make coffee is actually learning to use your taste to adjust your hands, as long as you learn the theory, you will know how to adjust later.

After you have coffee powder, the next step is to prepare hot water. The temperature of the water will affect the flavor of the coffee. To simplify this article, you can set the temperature between 85 and 90 degrees to make your first cup of coffee. I'll write another article later on about the relationship between temperature and taste.

With coffee powder and hot water, we can pull out the aroma of coffee beans and turn them into our favorite coffee drinks. Coffee powder is filtered to separate coffee from powder. Different filter designs have their own requirements for falling water. Under different requirements, the goal is to achieve an average taste of coffee powder.

The most common filter cup for fine coffee is the Japanese Hario V60, V-shaped filter paper, which falls into the cup through a large drop hole. The characteristic is high degree of control, the user can change the force and direction of falling water to change the involved characteristics. To brew a good cup of coffee with V60 requires a certain amount of experience and a complete understanding of the impact of each brewing parameter on taste. We do not recommend new friends to teach themselves V60, because its journey is more rugged than other filter cups.

What are the "steams" and "hamburgers" in hand-brewed coffee?

[Steaming] is often expressed as Bloom in English instructions, which refers to the preparatory action of wetting the surface of coffee powder evenly with a small amount of hot water before formal injection in the process of hand brewing.

Steaming is a very important part of the process of making hand-brewed coffee. Good steaming can fully infiltrate the coffee powder and activate the coffee activity, thus making the subsequent coffee extraction process smoother. Some steams with obvious steams and large exhaust volume will make the coffee method expand and bulge, such as hamburger. Generally speaking, for beginners, the effect of steaming can be judged by observing the shape of "hamburger".

The role of hand brewed coffee steaming

First, to release the gas in coffee particles, mainly carbon dioxide.

When coffee is roasted, it experiences high temperature (at least more than 160 degrees Celsius), the gaps between the fibers inside the coffee will become more and more loose and more and more, and these fiber gaps often hide a large amount of carbon dioxide and other gases produced by the chemical changes of the coffee beans themselves during roasting, and these gases are mostly inert gases. Even if it is ground into powder, although the beans will be ground open during grinding, there will still be gas in some fiber voids.

Therefore, when the brewing process begins, the coffee powder will absorb water, and the water will gradually fill these voids. When the fiber voids in the coffee are really filled, the gas is discharged, and the powder ball is completely exposed to water, ready to start releasing effective substances.

Second, in order to make coffee physically expand, form a uniform gap, and then form a good filter layer, so that hot water can quickly and evenly penetrate, will not be excessively blocked, resulting in excessive extraction, and then fully extracted.

Because the density of water is higher than that of gas, the gas in the powder fiber will always be discharged to the outside of the powder. However, due to the fact that water has a certain tension, and coffee also releases soluble substances, the surface tension of water is further strengthened, and the powder floats on the surface, further reducing the distance between water molecules. The surface tension is also increased in phase. The gas cannot pass through the surface of the powder layer at one time. However, after the water is absorbed by the coffee powder, more and more gas is discharged. The burger gets bigger and bigger.