Coffee knowledge and skills of making coffee by hand

Among the many brewing methods, hand brewing can be said to be the most popular coffee brewing method, which is simple, easy to learn, easy to control, and the taste can be accepted by most people. But there are also many friends who are not sure how to find the taste that suits them when making, what factors affect a cup of hand coffee and how influential it is.

Hand coffee supplies: coffee, filter paper, water

Hand coffee utensils: coffee cups, pots, water injectors, weighing tools, timing tools, thermometers, grinding tools

Several major factors affecting the production of hand-brewed coffee:

Selection of coffee beans:

We make coffee, not orange juice, not green tea, so the coffee itself determines the basic taste of this cup of coffee. For example, whether this coffee is tanned or washed, it comes from Asia, Indonesia, Colombia in South America, or Ethiopia in Africa. When the coffee is confirmed, the taste in your cup is actually 50% sure. This is the most important part.

The degree of grinding and evenness of coffee:

The degree of grinding thickness of coffee directly determines the amount of coffee substances extracted in the brewing process. In unit time, the thicker the coffee substance is, the more difficult it is to be extracted, and the finer the coffee is, the faster the extraction speed is. Reflected in the taste, it will be lighter or stronger. Under normal circumstances, our coffee mill can not be absolutely uniform, after you choose the thickness, a certain proportion of the powder that does not meet your requirements will be ground out, which, if appropriate, will increase the layering of the coffee flavor. and excessive uneven coffee taste will make the coffee taste "out of control".

Water quality and water temperature:

The water quality varies in different parts of the country, and it is generally believed that the water quality in the north is not as good as that in the south. There are two options for making coffee water, treated water and purchased bottled water. The so-called treated water is tap water treated by a water softener, water purifier or pure water machine. this kind of water can be used to make coffee and tastes much better than using tap water directly. The other is to use purchased pure water to make coffee. Cost is not what we are thinking about today, so we can basically default to a more expensive way of handling, perhaps, we are talking about the possibility that it will taste better.

Water temperature is also an important indicator affecting the taste of coffee. When I personally make coffee, I am used to using a water temperature of about 90 degrees, which is, of course, in line with my grinding thickness. You don't have to be so precise, in fact, you can fix a personal habit, such as standing for 1 minute or 1.5 minutes after the water is fully boiled, of course, you have to adjust the temperature in the room according to the temperature in the room. There is estimated to be a temperature difference between winter and summer.

Soaking time of coffee:

This is easy to understand. The longer you soak, the more substances will be extracted, and the flavor will be about strong, and vice versa. However, what factors will affect the soaking time? let's elaborate on them one by one.

First of all, the degree of coffee grinding, coarse filter fast, fine filter slow, which we can imagine, fast filtration, per unit of water natural coffee and water contact time is short, the taste will be light, and vice versa.

Then there is the filter, one of the filters we commonly use is filter paper, a good filter paper should be odorless, good filter water. I once used a kind of inferior filter paper, which is very thin, but the filtration speed is very slow, only water injection, but not dirty, which will inevitably lead to a long soaking time. In addition, common filters include flannel and metal. It is generally believed that these materials, filter paper filterability is the best, the disadvantage is high cost, may have the taste of pulp. Flannel, is also generally considered to be excellent filtering effect, the production of coffee taste soft, mellow, but repeated use, flannel is very easy to absorb the taste of coffee, resulting in cross-contamination. Finally, there is a metal filter, which is considered to be the worst filter, and it also makes some very fine coffee powder difficult to filter out.

Another factor that affects the immersion time is the method and method of hand-flushing water injection. Some friends like to inject water in one breath, that is, they keep injecting water all the time, some people like the method of twice water injection, and some people like the way of water injection more times. You can try to calculate separately, you can find that the difference in the way of water injection can cause a great difference in jet lag, that is, the difference in the time of soaking coffee in water. Usually the soaking time of my personal preference for 20 grams of coffee is about 2 minutes. Of course, if you use an ordinary kettle instead of a special hand flushing kettle, it may be difficult for you to control your water volume, so you may not be able to accurately grasp your water injection time, and one-time water injection may be more suitable for you.

The ratio of gouache to powder when brewing coffee:

When we make tea, one of the most basic principles may be known to everyone: if you want to be strong, put more tea. The same applies to coffee making. If you want stronger coffee, we put in more coffee powder. However, if we want to make a stable cup of coffee and drink the standard taste every day, John recommends that we have a standard gouache ratio, or at least a personal habit. John's personal habit is 20g of coffee and 300ml of water, that is, the ratio of powder to water is 1:15. Of course, this is also under the premise that I fix the water temperature and grinding thickness. This is a basic universal ratio, which can then be slightly adjusted according to specific coffee and personal preferences.

At this point, in fact, we should have some idea, in fact, the key factors affecting the production of coffee will interact with each other, they will cycle. For example, if the coffee powder is ground roughly, the filtering speed will be faster and the taste will be light, but you can slightly increase the water temperature or increase the soaking time to adjust the taste in the cup. But no matter how you adjust, you can not change your coffee beans, this is the main theme of your cup of coffee, we will discuss with you in the following articles how to choose a coffee that suits you.