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Why do I need to inject water in circles to make coffee by hand? How should I fill the water when making coffee, and how large a circle should I make it?

Published: 2025-02-09 Author:
Last Updated: 2025/02/09, Surprise question: What is the soul of hand-brewed coffee? It's called "hands" to make coffee, then the soul must be "people"! (Just kidding) The difference between hand-brewed coffee and other extraction methods is that it requires artificial water injection to complete an extraction of coffee. So in addition to time, ratio, grinding, water temperature,

Surprise question: what is the soul of hand coffee? They are all called "hands" to make coffee, then the soul must be "people"! (just kidding) what distinguishes hand-brewed coffee from other extraction methods is that it is an extraction of coffee that needs to be done by artificial injection of water. Therefore, in addition to the conventional extraction parameters such as time, proportion, grinding, water temperature, etc., the way of water injection will also affect the taste of coffee. Qianjie has shared a lot of cases about the effect of water injection on coffee. For example, the height of water injection, the size of water flow and the number of segments are the main points of water injection that are often mentioned in the article in Qianjie. In addition to these aspects, there is another water injection factor that we are used to, but has a significant impact on coffee extraction, and that is: the path of water flow.

When brewing coffee, we will inject hot water in a circle, which is a very basic operation. But with such a simple operation, the impact on coffee will be much greater than you think. So today, Qianjie will come to share with you why we go around when we are making coffee! Circle! Note! water!

Why do you pour water in a circle when making coffee? There are two reasons for injecting water in a circle. The first one in front of the street, who believes in wit, has already guessed the answer. That's right! Is to improve the efficiency of extraction. By injecting water around the circle, the liquid concentration in the filter cup and the release rate of coffee will be changed.

It's just like what we do in milk powder, bubble gum water and granules in our daily life. If you do not stir with any external force, just use hot water to soak sugar or granules, these particles will be difficult to completely dissolve. But if we apply stirring, the dissolution rate of these particles will be greatly increased. The same is true for coffee, the injected water column will assume the important task of stirring the coffee powder to improve the dissolution rate of coffee flavor substances.

This is why the injection of hand-brewed coffee needs to be done in a circle, rather than being fixed at a certain point. Of course, Qianjie is not saying that hand flushing can not be fixed-point water injection, but the use of fixed-point water injection needs to be combined with other current extraction parameters. For example, when the extraction efficiency provided by other parameters is too high (when the extraction time is too long, the water temperature is too high, and the grinding is very fine), we need to reduce the stirring of water flow by fixed-point water injection, so as to prevent coffee from over-extraction. As mentioned in the front street, there are two main reasons for the use of circular water injection. In addition to improving the extraction rate, another reason is to reduce the generation of Turbulent flow.

When we use smart cups, French presses and other utensils to make coffee, stirring will be applied in the process of coffee soaking in order to improve the extraction efficiency. Such as cross stirring method, ∞ stirring method, Z stirring method, are all mixing methods that we can use freely in immersion extraction. If you use these stirring methods when making hand-brewed coffee, it is not only easy to cause turbulence, but also make it impossible for hot water to evenly extract all coffee powder. To put it simply, it will increase the instability of extraction. Because the stirring form of the water column is different from that of wooden sticks, spoons and other solids, it will make it difficult for the coffee to meet its expectations. Therefore, compared with other "irregular" mixing methods, it is safer to inject water in a circle when making coffee by hand.

After talking about why the coffee is made by hand, let's talk about how to circle in the front street, which is also a question often asked by many friends when making coffee in the front street.

How should I circle and inject water? As said at the beginning of Qianjie, it is a very basic operation, so you don't have to think about it as complicated. In the process of water injection, we only need to let the water pass through the coffee powder at the same time, carry on the stable water injection circle (that is, steadily stir the coffee powder).

Perhaps many friends will put the focus of water injection around the speed, such as: "the faster the circle, the more times the coffee powder is stirred, the higher the extraction efficiency." Although the speed of the circle does affect the extraction efficiency, the influence is not as great as people think. "the size of the flow, the position of water injection", the impact of the two will be relatively greater. And the faster the circle, the more difficult it is for us to inject a steady flow of water, which not only fails to make the coffee powder evenly stirred, but also makes the turbulence easier to produce, and the extraction efficiency decreases. Therefore, we do not need to excessive pursuit of fast circle, properly slow down the speed of the circle, stable injection of water to stir the coffee powder is the safest way.

To sum up, with regard to how to inject water around the circle, the Qianjie Association recommends the simplest and most common practice: the mosquito-repellent incense ring. As the name implies, the current is injected like the direction of a mosquito-repellent incense plate. At first, the circle is slowly wound out from the middle, and when it is close to the edge of the filter cup, the circle is gradually reduced, that is, from the outside to the inside. This is the so-called "mosquito-repellent ring". Because the speed of our circle is slow, we can have more time and energy to observe the powder bed, launching speed, liquid weight, and better control the size and angle of water flow in the process of water injection. This can greatly reduce the occurrence of "rollover" incidents.

In addition, Qianjie often mentions the words "around the big circle" and "around the small circle" in the cooking sharing, which means that the focus of the circle should be on the outer circle or the inner circle. These two words mainly appear in the cooking of the tapered filter cup, because the powder bed distribution of the tapered filter cup is different from that of the flat-bottomed filter cup, and the thickness of the powder bed is higher. In order for all coffee powder to be extracted evenly, we need to change the focus of the extraction according to the cooking process. Well, because Qianjie is often mentioned, so there is not too much introduction here. In short, we can simply understand that when injecting water around the mosquito-repellent incense circle, the big circle is to make a few more circles in the outer circle, while the small circle is to narrow the scope of the circle, and circle it in the center of the filter cup in a coin-sized range. They mainly stir the coffee powder on the surface and the coffee powder on the bottom. That's all you need to pay attention to. You can learn more about it in combination with practical operation.

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