What is a non-bypass filter bowl? What does bypass mean? What is the bypass water for coffee?

The mild taste of coffee can be said to be a common thing, because there are so many factors that can affect coffee! For example, it is often shared in Qianjie that the concentration of coffee is not enough to drink water because the proportion of powdered water is too low, or because the water temperature is not high enough, grinding is not fine enough, and the extraction efficiency is not high enough. this will also make coffee taste inferior because of the lack of substances.

In addition to these common reasons, there is another factor that can also lead to the weak taste of coffee, which is a less mentioned, but not uncommon, reason-too much bypass water!

What is bypass water? In the production of hand-brewed coffee, we will use hot water as a "solvent" to dissolve the flavor substances in the coffee. The process of dissolution is bound to let the hot water come into contact with the coffee powder, so we will direct the hot water to the powder bed for contact extraction by controlling the kettle. But in many cases, the hot water does not seep down according to the route we planned. Instead, it will bypass the coffee powder and drop directly into the pot. It is equivalent to saying that this part of the hot water is not fully involved in coffee extraction, and there is very little coffee in the water when dripping into the pot. Then this "alternative" hot water is called "bypass water".

Although we often use bypass water to dilute high concentrations of coffee (American, high-concentration and low-extract Japanese hand flushing), it is done on purpose. Hot water is specially used as bypass water according to our setting. When we carry out conventional extraction, hot water, as a member of the extraction parameters, when their route deviates and fails to fulfill their due extraction obligations, it means that the extraction efficiency of the whole coffee will be reduced. Coffee is not only easy to produce taste differences because of insufficient extraction, but also because these hot water that does not carry any substances are added, so that the coffee concentration is not high enough to dilute more, resulting in the phenomenon that coffee is both light and unpalatable. To avoid this phenomenon is actually very simple, as long as we reduce the production of bypass water.

How is the bypass water produced? The reason why hot water avoids coffee powder to form bypass water in the process of extraction is that there are free gaps for it to circulate. What can do this is mainly caused by improper brewing and cooking of the filter cup.

Just like the V60 filter cup, many filter cups have protruding diversion ribs designed to direct hot water to more coffee powder, allowing the hot water at the edge to flow along the ribs instead of simply seeping down. The protruding guide bone supports the filter paper so that it does not cling to the wall of the cup. Then, a lot of gaps are created between the filter paper and the cup wall. Once we pour water into the filter paper that is not covered by the coffee powder bed, the hot water will break through the filter paper because of the impact, bypassing the coffee powder and dripping into the pot. (too much hot water will easily deviate from the "course")

Therefore, we can know that in order to reduce the production of bypass water, what we need to do is to avoid injecting too much hot water as much as possible, and to keep the hot water from rushing to the edge of the filter paper without coffee powder distribution, so that the bypass water can be minimized. Of course, if you can't control yourself and still get used to pouring hot water to the edge, it doesn't matter. If we can't solve the problem, then we are the "initiator" of solving the production problem.

Because of the protruding ribs, the filter paper is supported to create gaps, which leads to the birth of bypass water. Such being the case, we only need to use the filter cup without protruding diversion bone, isn't it? coincidentally, some merchants on the market have learned this truth and have launched filter cups with "no bypass" as the selling point. The so-called "no bypass" means that there will be no bypass water. These filter cups are not unexpected, there are almost no prominent guide bones, and the filter paper will fit perfectly with the wall of the filter cup, and even if it rushes to the edge, it will pass through the coffee powder instead of dripping directly, so there is no need to worry about the birth of bypass water.

So just buy a "no bypass" filter cup? Of course it's a joke! Habits still need to be changed. The reason why we want to let the hot water wash into the coffee powder, not only because we want the hot water to touch the coffee powder to bring out flavor substances, but also a condition is to let it "accelerate" to bring out. In order to make the hot water dissolve a large amount of coffee in a short period of time, we will control the kettle to circle continuously during the injection process, so that the water column acts as a stirring rod to dissolve the coffee powder more quickly.

And if the hot water we injected is often washed to the edge, even if it can come into contact with coffee powder, it is in the form of soaking, and the extraction efficiency is greatly reduced. If it is not soaked for a long time, coffee is still prone to insufficient extraction. Therefore, although the replacement of the filter cup can reduce the birth of bypass water, it is a temporary cure, and the bad habit still needs to be corrected. In this way, we can better flush out the delicious coffee with outstanding flavor and strong flavor!

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