How to regulate the grinding degree of the French kettle? What will happen to the fine grinding flavor of the French kettle?

The French filter pot is one of the simplest and lowest-cost coffee brewing methods. Even beginners can quickly make a decent cup of coffee.

But what happens if you adjust the grinding thickness of the powder when brewing this decent cup of coffee?

This may be against our perception, but in this article we will see whether the fine grinding of the punch kettle is feasible in the end.

An immutable rule

The world of fine coffee often adjusts the extraction time, grinding thickness and other factors in order to achieve the most suitable brewing method for this coffee. But the tests of these factors are usually only used in hand brewing, espresso, love pressure and other brewing methods, while the French kettle is always ignored.

It is generally agreed that the kettle should be boiled with coarse ground coffee powder, soaked for three to five minutes, and then pressed to drink.

Of course, there are three factors that can be tested in the French kettle, and three factors are related, if you adjust one factor, the other two may have to be adjusted as well.

Why is rough grinding usually used?

It may seem strange to buy an expensive bean grinder for the grinding thickness of the experimental kettle, but if you want to drink good coffee, you can think about it. After all, a good bean grinder can grind coffee powder of stable quality.

Inconsistent grinding will form powders of different thickness, while low-quality beans will form a large number of fine powders. although these fine powders can be screened with a sieve, if the screening action is not implemented, the coffee will be full of miscellaneous taste and bitterness.

When you use coarse ground coffee powder, you are less likely to produce a large amount of fine powder, which means you are less likely to drink a cup of coffee with a heavy flavor. If you use a good quality bean grinder, or after grinding with a sieve, you can solve the problem of fine powder caused by grinding.

The French filter kettle is a kind of immersion brewing method, which means that the extraction time of coffee beans is longer than other brewing methods. for this reason, we often use thicker grinding to ensure that the extraction speed will not lead to over-extraction.

If it is hand-brewed coffee, fine grinding will be used so that the water will not flow too quickly through the powder, but there will be no problem with the extraction in the autoclave, so we can have more freedom to experiment. Of course, we must take into account that if the grinding degree is adjusted, the extraction time should also be adjusted to avoid excessive extraction. But it is not limited to the problem of hand-flushed water passing through the powder bed.

Debate on fine grinding

The reason for using fine grinding is to accelerate the extraction of flavor substances, because the powder has more surface area in contact with water, so that the soluble substances of coffee can be dissolved in water more quickly.

Matt Perger, founder of Barista Hustle, said that the most important part is that the grinding thickness does not really change the extracted substance, it only changes when the extract will be extracted, because that is what all the flavors of coffee beans are, and that is the amount of material that can be extracted at most. Grinding thickness will only affect how many flavor substances will dissolve in water.

Matt stressed that if you let the water contact with the coffee longer, it will extract more flavor, and we can do this by extending the extraction time, but because the hot water cools during the brewing process, this may not be as effective as using the same extraction time with fine grinding to make the coffee.

One of the concerns about using a finely ground coffee powder into the press is that the coffee may have a mixed smell, because the finer ground powder will penetrate the filter of the kettle, but the better quality of the kettle can keep the medium-ground powder from penetrating the filter.

James Hoffman, author of the World Coffee Map, suggests using medium-ground coffee powder to make the coffee kettle, stirring in four minutes and pouring coffee out in five to seven minutes. He also said that the French kettle is the most fault-tolerant brewing device, soaking for a long time so that the coffee can easily show a complete extraction flavor.

However, James also suggests that you try to cook it with a fine grind until it tastes bitter. If the coffee has a bitter taste, you must slightly adjust the grinding degree of the coffee powder, so that you can flush out the good taste of the coffee.

In other words, to avoid excessive extraction, if the grinding is too fine, it will extract too many bitter substances, resulting in bad coffee.