Coffee review

Why do all the iced American tastes different in coffee shops? How to make a standard ice American style?

Published: 2025-02-08 Author:
Last Updated: 2025/02/08, "Did you change beans? This American cup seems to..."I believe that many baristas will be more or less uneasy when they hear this sentence. They are deeply afraid that the other person will say negative descriptors such as" so bitter "," so astringent ", and" difficult to drink ", so they tentatively asked if there was anything wrong until they heard it.

"did you change beans? this cup of American seems to be."

I believe that many baristas will be more or less nervous when they hear this sentence, fearing that the other person will say negative descriptions such as "good bitter", "good astringent" and "bad", so they tentatively ask if there is any problem. Until I heard the guest reply: delicious, the feeling is not the same as before! The barista said jubilantly, "No, it's the same bean."

The conversation took place at the Qianjie store on Monday, when the guest held up a cup of iced American coffee and said, "it doesn't seem to taste the same as last time, this cup is more sour and refreshing!" The question is, obviously in the same store, but also the same coffee beans, different circumstances to make the American style will really have a big change? What are the factors that affect it?

As the best-selling product in countless cafes, American style is convenient, fast and affordable, which can meet the daily caffeine needs of most people. Making a cup of American style consists of only a few simple movements: take the cup, fill it with water, pour it into concentration, and add at most a piece of ice. To put it bluntly, American coffee is concentrated with water, and we also know that water is colorless and tasteless, so the "culprit" that can cause the American style to change flavor can only be that cup of concentrate.

Usually, each store's Italian coffee beans, powder usage, product ratio is fixed, before the street, for example, we usually use sunflowers with warm sun to match coffee beans, a single concentrated use of 20 grams of coffee powder extract 40 grams of liquid weight, out of the hot American style will use the capacity of about 200ml ceramic cups, and in the proportion of 1:4 to the concentration by adding 160ml hot water, the temperature will be adjusted according to the weather or guest needs. Iced American coffee is produced by replacing hot water with 90 grams of ice and 160 grams of normal water.

Under such conditions, the main flavor tonality and concentration of the same American coffee drunk in the same shop will not be much different in theory. For example, Qianjie uses warm sun products, when the standard American style should have flavors such as vanilla, cream, fermented wine, cocoa and slight fruit acid, and then the concentration will fall in the range of 1.4-1.7%, refreshing, sour and sweet to taste. Coffee tastes sweet but not bitter.

Since there is no change of beans and the extraction ratio is fixed, what on earth is the reason for the American style of a coffee shop to "change its taste"?

1. Bean cultivation time

As we all know, freshly roasted coffee beans contain a lot of carbon dioxide gas, and the deeper the roasting, the looser the texture and the more gases inside, which will inhibit the dissolution and release of flavor substances to a certain extent.

When the newly roasted coffee beans are extracted with a pressurized coffee machine, we can feel a large number of bubbles discharged with the coffee liquid, making the concentrate seem to have a rich oil (crema), but in fact they are very unstable, and the surface is rough or even caked, and the taste is lack of mellow aroma, which is the lack of extraction caused by excessive gas. Therefore, if you want to make a good cup of espresso, the recuperation steps of beans are essential. Qianjie will generally keep the roasted warm-yang Italian beans in the shade for about 10 days before they begin to use.

Because the cooked beans are continuously exhausting, the concentrated taste will constantly change according to the state of the beans during use. For example, Qianjie is extracted and concentrated within 10-20 days of the bean cultivation period, and the oil layer accounts for a relatively large proportion. American style is mostly characterized by clear acid of raspberry and vanilla, cream, and slight sense of fermentation; when it is used for 20-30 days after baking, crema is significantly reduced, and the later flavor substances such as caramel, wine and nuts begin to release more, then the American taste will be slightly full-bodied and mellow.

2. Weather change

In addition to being affected by the state of coffee beans, Italian concentrated extraction is also related to air temperature and humidity, so once we encounter a cloudy and rainy day with low air pressure and high humidity, or when we go back to the south, which we Lao Guang hates most, it is hot and humid inside and outside. The barista adjusted the concentration to be almost one or two big.

When the indoor humidity is higher, the air is full of active water molecules, the coffee beans that should be dried and stored are more likely to be attacked by moisture, and the ground coffee powder is more likely to "huddle" and stick to the knife head and channel of the bean grinder. the caked coffee powder not only leads to uneven extraction, but also forms the consequence of channel effect. Maybe the last handful of coffee tastes good, but the next cup has a slightly more bitter, miscellaneous or salty taste.

In addition, a lower atmospheric pressure makes the coffee maker less pressurized than usual, which is why espresso on rainy days is often less fragrant and more monotonous than on sunny days. Therefore, in order to avoid the abnormal taste of the coffee, responsible baristas will always pay attention to the state of concentrated extraction in order to make rapid adjustments.

3. Soybean warehouse pressure

Filling up the bean warehouse is a preparation that almost every barista does before debugging in the morning, in order to provide a relatively stable pressure value for the Italian bean grinder, make the particle size of the powder more uniform, and then reduce the extraction error.

Qianjie has done a comparative experiment, when the coffee in the bean warehouse is less than 1 to 4, the grinding will become thicker with the decrease of the pressure value, resulting in a reduction of 3-5 seconds in the time to extract the double concentrate with the same amount of powder, and the taste is very different from that of the morning debugging. So for baristas who control the bar, if you want to maintain a stable extraction plan for the day, don't wait for the bean barn to run out of coffee.

4. Continuous cups

When a bean grinder continuously pulls out the cup, the cutter head running at a high speed will produce heat, which will make the coffee powder after grinding thicker or uneven in particle size, and then lead to unstable concentration flow rate. On the other hand, the heating of the knife head will also accelerate the volatilization of the flavor substances in the coffee granules, and the temperature of pressed powder will also increase in the extraction stage, thus reducing the viscosity of the coffee.

Of course, there are many reasons why the American style is not right, such as the barista accidentally hit the handle, the cloth powder is not ready, the coffee liquid is extracted more / less, and the parameters that match the bean flavor are not adjusted. These details, which are easy to be overlooked, test whether a barista's basic skills are solid or not.

The reason why Qianjie talks so much is not to make people find fault with baristas or to complicate simple concepts, but to provide us with different perspectives to understand the logic behind delicious food and explore the charm of the espresso system. And more possibilities for a cup of American coffee.

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