How does the concentration of espresso affect? What does shot mean? How to say strong coffee?

Maybe you want to eat more caffeine, or you may want to drink a stronger coffee flavor. All in all, there are always customers in coffee shops who have a higher demand for coffee concentration from time to time. However, since some guests and friends do not know the field of coffee (and it is not necessary), they do not know that coffee has an option to add Shot. So the way they convey thickening is often: boss, please help me to extract some more espresso, I want to drink a little stronger.

Because these friends will think that coffee is like tea, if you want to make it stronger, then make it for a while and then it will be over. Is that really the case? You can take a look at this experiment under the front street!

In the extraction experiment, three cups of espresso with different liquid weight will be extracted from Qianjie while keeping the water temperature, pressure, grinding degree and powder amount unchanged. Then through tasting and concentration measurement, see how the concentration and taste of these coffees have changed! The coffee beans used are also sunflower sunflowers from Qianjie. The grinding scale is 1.8g of Galileo Q18, the weight of powder is 20g, and the weight of extraction solution is 38ml, 45ml and 55ml respectively.

First cup: the time of extraction to 38ml concentration is 30 seconds, and the TDS value measured by concentration meter is 11.87%. The flavor is whisky wine, butter cookies, sweet and sour berries, finish with vanilla, toast aromas, the taste is very mellow, silky. The second cup: the time of extraction to 45ml concentration is 35 seconds, and the tested TDS value is 10.24%. The flavor is caramel, whisky, chocolate, and faint berry acid. The finish is nutty, but with a bitter finish. The taste is mellow. The third group: the time of extraction to 55ml concentration was 38 seconds, and the test TDS value was 9.22%. Its entrance has completely lost the mellow feeling of the first two cups, and it is very thin. Flavor feeling is not pleasant, the original aroma is all gone, the flavor to wood tonality, mugi-cha-based, almost can not feel the sour taste, slightly choked throat after swallowing.

It can be seen that although the coffee is more extracted, it has not become thicker! Not only that, the taste of coffee also deteriorates with the increase of liquid volume. Then why did this happen? In front of the street, let's explain why the taste of coffee is getting worse. I believe we all know very well that this is because coffee does not get a suitable extraction rate. The soluble substance in coffee is only 30%. Although there is only so much, we don't need to extract all of it! Because 30% of the substance contains not only pleasant positive flavor, but also some unpleasant negative flavor. Therefore, we need to control the extraction rate during extraction to limit the release of coffee flavor substances and avoid unpleasant flavor release as far as possible.

The reason why the concentration of the first cup is the best is that the extraction rate provided by each parameter is just right, so the final concentration not only has a good taste because of the appropriate extraction rate, but also has a mellow taste because of the high concentration. In the last two cups, due to the increase of extraction time and liquid volume, the originally limited extraction rate was broken and some unpleasant substances hidden in coffee beans were also released. If we want to lengthen the liquid volume, but the coffee wants to maintain the same high-quality taste, we need to reduce the extraction efficiency of other parameters to limit the extraction rate of coffee. Such as roughing and grinding, or increasing the amount of powder. Lungo is such an existence, although it is more liquid weight of espresso, but the premise is that the extraction efficiency is not high, in order to achieve a large amount of liquid, but delicious. So let's talk about the concentration, we might as well observe the concentrated extraction process.

It can be seen that the color of espresso is constantly changing in the process of extraction, from a thick dark brown to a thin yellowish color. On the other hand, Qianjie uses three cups to pick up the concentrated coffee liquid released from the front, middle and back, and taste it in turn.

The first cup of coffee liquid tastes the richest of the three cups concentrated, and the sour taste is very prominent, some uncomfortable, while the second cup tastes more balanced and moderate concentration; the third cup of fat is the lightest cup of the three cups, even a little white. The entrance has a slight bitter taste, the aroma is also very weak, and the taste is still thin. It can be seen that the concentration of coffee liquid will gradually decrease with the increase of extraction. This is because at the beginning, when the flavor substances in the coffee powder are the most abundant, we extract most of the coffee substances at the very beginning, and with the gradual reduction of coffee substances, the hot water can bring out less and less, and the concentration of the extracted coffee liquid is getting lower and lower. When the concentration of the coffee liquid is low to a certain extent, not only can not thicken the whole cup of coffee, but will dilute the whole cup of coffee.

Combining the negative taste of excessive extraction, we can see why a little more extraction can not increase the concentration of coffee, or even make the taste of coffee worse. Therefore, if friends want to make the coffee stronger, ask the barista to add more Shot to the coffee, or less milk and less water to reduce the dilution caused by these liquids to the coffee concentration. In this way, we can drink coffee with a higher concentration on the basis of the original one.

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FrontStreet Coffee is a long-established specialty coffee roaster in Guangzhou China, selling freshly roasted beans from its own farm in Yunnan as well as dozens of carefully selected single-origin beans from around the world for both pour-over and espresso. The products deliver consistently excellent quality and great value, with shipping within 24 hours. Guangzhou’s FrontStreet Coffee shop is recommended by many coffee lovers, and the beans are now available online at the Tmall 。

Important Notice :

前街咖啡 FrontStreet Coffee has moved to new addredd:

FrontStreet Coffee Address: 315,Donghua East Road,GuangZhou

Tel:020 38364473