Is Italian coffee beans suitable for making hand-brewed coffee?

When we search for coffee beans on shopping platforms, there are usually two types: one is a single-item coffee bean with detailed origin information, suitable for most extraction methods, such as hand brewing, French press pot, cold extraction, etc., usually within half a pound.

The other is specially used for espresso machine extraction concentrated Italian beans, usually mainly to blend, roast a little deeper, often sold by 500 grams, 1 pound or more specifications. Because the amount of a single packet is relatively large, some friends who consume slowly will think, can this kind of Italian beans also be used to make hand-brewed coffee? Does it taste good?

What are the characteristics of Italian coffee beans?

Considering that it is necessary to adapt to the espresso machine extracted at high temperature and high pressure, so that the concentrate can show a more stable flavor and taste, the espresso beans usually choose more than 2 batches of different origins to make the formula, using a deeper roasting degree, so that the espresso has both appropriate fat and good concentration. Therefore, Italian beans are often directly referred to as blended beans.

Recipes vary widely for different purposes, but are generally considered in three areas, including cost-effectiveness, stability, and flavor performance.

For example, when the front street customizes a commercial coffee bean, it is positioned with high cost performance. It adopts 1% washed Robusta +3% washed Colombia +6.5% sun-dried Brazil, so that the concentrate can have rich fat and nut aroma, and also has the advantage of inexpensive price. When customizing sunflower warm sun blending, it focuses on the flavor performance of coffee, hoping that it has both the fermented aroma of sherry and the sour and sweet fruit of red cherry, so 30% Ethiopian sun-dried red cherry +70% Honduran sherry is selected.

All coffee beans can be used for hand brewing, as can Italian beans.

Hand brewing is only a very common brewing mode, as long as you have the appropriate equipment and raw materials (coffee beans/powder) can be extracted in hand brewing form. So we can understand that as long as it is roasted coffee beans, it can be used for hand brewing, including the Italian coffee beans we have been talking about. As for whether it tastes good or not, it depends on the quality of the coffee beans and whether you grasp the brewing parameters.

As mentioned above, Italian coffee beans are mostly roasted to a deep degree, usually showing a roasted charred flavor spectrum, such as dark chocolate, nuts, caramel, cream... When made into concentrated taste more prominent full flavor, and hand infusion such as drip extraction, the taste is more inclined to mellow and solid sweet and bitter. If it is coffee beans used to make SOE, in order to highlight the fruit acid, usually the roasting will be lighter. When extracting in the form of hand brewing, you need to adjust the brewing parameters of medium light roasted coffee beans.

Here we go. How about trying it?

Since we've talked about this, with a curious attitude, the front street also "digs" some Italian blend beans from the bean warehouse to make a pot of coffee, and see how the warm sun blend flavor is made by hand ~

Because the warm sun blend coffee beans produced in the store are roasted moderately deep, the brewing front street uses a lower water temperature and moderate grinding, hoping to avoid excessive negative bitterness. In order to highlight the tropical fruit acidity of sun-dried red cherries, Qianjie chose v60 filter cup, combined with 1:16 powder and water ratio, so that coffee flavor is more layered and active.

Coffee beans: 15g Sunflower warm sun blend powder water ratio: 1:16 Water temperature: 88℃ Grinding degree: 20 sieve pass rate 75%(EK43s scale 10.5) Method: three-stage water injection Filter cup: hario v60 Extraction time: 2 minutes 4 seconds

The warm sun blend extracted by hand shows obvious vanilla, dark chocolate flavor, slight fermentation wine aroma, citrus acid, creamy smooth on the mouth, medium high body, a trace of caramel aroma remains in the mouth after swallowing.

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Front Street Cafe

No.10 Baoanqian Street, Yandun Road, Dongshankou, Yuexiu District, Guangzhou City, Guangdong Province