How can hand-brewed coffee highlight the sweetness? What does high concentration and low extract mean? What does the high intensity and low extract in hand-brewed coffee mean?

Even if the sweetness in coffee does not come entirely from sugar, it is sweet enough for us to secrete pleasant dopamine, so people's pursuit of coffee will always put "sweet" in the first place. In contrast, bitterness is the most unpleasant taste, which makes us resist this cup of coffee and make it difficult to swallow. So, is there any way to avoid the release of bitterness and keep only the sweetness of coffee?

There is! Qianjie often says that the taste of coffee will dissolve at different rates depending on the size of the molecule. First it's sweet and sour, then it's bitter and mixed. If we don't want the coffee to have too much bitterness, we just need to control the brewing to end before the bitterness dissolves in large quantities.

Of course, this is not to ask you to pinch off the end of the coffee extraction, because if it is not set in advance, it will deviate your original extraction. What Qianjie wants to share today is not a certain brewing method, nor any brewing parameters, but a brewing idea, a way to make coffee sweet without bitterness, it is-- high concentration and low extraction.

What is high concentration and low extraction? In order to understand the idea of "high concentration and low extraction", we need to have a brief understanding of gold cup extraction. The so-called golden cup extraction means that coffee has a generally considered delicious range. As long as we control the concentration and extraction rate when brewing coffee in this range (concentration 1.15-1.35%, extraction rate 18-22%), then this cup of coffee will be liked by the vast majority of people. Because of the balance between the concentration and the extraction rate, the coffee not only has the right concentration, but also tastes very good.

The idea of high concentration and low extraction can be understood to control the concentration and extraction rate of coffee in the higher and lower range of gold cup extraction, respectively. For example, if the concentration of our coffee is 1.35% and the extraction rate is 18%, then we can understand it as "high concentration and low extraction". Of course, this is just a metaphor, even if your concentration is higher, to 1.45%, the extraction rate is lower, to 17%, it is also a cup of coffee with high concentration and low extraction. However, it is important to know that "low extraction" does not mean that the extraction rate should be very low, but relatively speaking, the extraction rate should be reduced to avoid releasing the odor at the end. If the extraction rate is too low, the coffee will be very light because of the lack of substance, or it will be sharp and sour because it tastes too sour. Therefore, what we need to do is to increase the concentration while keeping the extraction rate within the appropriate range.

As we all know, the Japanese have a special preference for deep-roasted coffee. But the deeper the beans are roasted, the easier it is to extract bitter substances. What the Japanese love is the mellow taste of deep-roasted coffee, the spices and the steady taste of chocolate, rather than the "excruciating bitterness". Therefore, in the year when the extraction theory was not fully popularized, they developed a lot of classical cooking methods! The extraction of these coffees will have a remarkable feature: large amount of powder and less liquid weight. Without exception, the final extracted coffee is high sweet but not bitter. And this is the forerunner of high concentration and low extraction. A cup of coffee with extremely high concentration but suitable extraction rate can be obtained by reducing the liquid weight and increasing the extraction rate. But at the same time, because the concentration of coffee is very high, after brewing, they will add hot water to dilute it, dilute it to an appropriate concentration and then serve it to the guests.

If you do not want to use this kind of tedious cooking method, then we can also design a set of high concentration and low extraction cooking scheme. After all, as Qianjie said, "high concentration and low extraction" is a cooking idea. The cooking method often shared in Qianjie is actually a high-concentration and low-quality version! You can refer to it! Take shallow roasting coffee as an example, the parameters of deep roasting coffee can be lowered! Powder quantity: 15g, grinding: 10 scale of ek43, 80% screening rate of No. 20 sieve, water temperature: 92 °C, powder-water ratio 1:15, washing and cooking method: three-stage type, filter cup: V60, extraction time: 2 minutes.

Under this parameter, the extraction rate of shallow roasted coffee will be about 17.8-19.5%, and the concentration will be 1.28-1.42%. The flavor of coffee is full and rich, with bright acidity. This idea can be applied to other brewing methods, in reducing the injection of hot water while increasing the extraction rate, the concentration of coffee can be increased, and the extraction rate can be limited to an appropriate range. Riestrito in the Italian system is such an operation, fine grinding on the basis of the original concentration to reduce the use of extraction water, so that a small amount of liquid re-extraction to extract more substances, the concentration increases while the extraction rate is not high, so the coffee is high sweet and not bitter.

But what we need to pay attention to is that too extreme high concentration and low extraction (such as ice flushing that is very thick) will have disadvantages! Because it sacrifices a lot of the last part of the material, the flavor, mellow and aftertaste will decline. If it is some high-quality beans, then we'd better not use the method of high concentration and low extraction. If it is some beans that are long from the baking date, deep baking and anaerobic treatment, which are easy to extract bitter taste, then the idea of high concentration and low extraction will be a very good choice.

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