What factors will affect the taste of hand-brewed coffee? Is there a relationship between alcohol thickness and concentration?

Guide reading

Taste refers to the touch of the mouth, which is different from the taste. This is also part of the sensory experience of coffee. Generally speaking, the taste is reflected in the mellow thickness, so which factors of hand-brewed coffee will affect the taste of coffee?

Alcohol thickness ≠ concentration

Many people mistakenly think that the thickness of alcohol is the concentration, and the thicker the caffeine, the higher the thickness. In fact, this is not accurate, the concentration is the proportion of the number and types of soluble components in coffee. The feeling of alcohol thickness mainly comes from the oil and fiber insoluble in water in the coffee solution.

Filter material

Therefore, the taste improvement is mainly reflected in the coffee grease, the filter paper used in hand-brewed coffee will filter most of the oil, but if you look carefully, the liquid surface of the coffee will float and a thin piece of oil. And that full, mellow taste comes largely from this layer of fat.

Therefore, the filter material will affect the alcohol thickness of the coffee, the coffee filtered by filter materials such as filter paper will be cleaner and can block most of the oil, while materials such as flannel and metal strainer will allow more coffee substances to pass through (including oil). So the coffee filtered with flannel will taste fuller.

Coffee beans

The choice of coffee beans is also very important, and different coffee beans show different taste. For example, in terms of treatment, the thickness of caffeine in honey treatment and sun treatment was higher than that in water washing treatment. Generally speaking, the more pectin that comes from coffee cherries when coffee beans are dried, the more mellow Body can be tasted in coffee.

In terms of the degree of roasting, the deeper the roast, the higher the alcohol thickness of the coffee (that is, we often say that the bitter coffee tastes better). Rob Hoos points out in his book Modulatingthe Flavor Profile of Coffee that if the Mena reaction is lengthened, more melanin-like pigments can be released, which means higher alcohol thickness can be created.

Powder-water ratio

Although it has been mentioned earlier that the thickness of alcohols is not equal to the concentration, they are related. The concentration is mainly reflected in the taste (whether the flavor is strong or not), while the alcohol thickness is reflected in the taste, which can be understood as that the low concentration will make people feel water, and the experience in the taste will not be too good. High concentrations of substance saturation also make a cup of coffee plump to some extent (mellow, including concentration is not equal to concentration).

Of course, coffee does not taste better if it is thicker and thicker. As indicated by the Golden Cup rule, there is a range of acceptance of coffee concentration, which may cause discomfort to the human body.