What is the difference between one-step flow and three-step flow? Which is the best water injection method for making coffee by hand? How to brew a knife stream?

I believe that everyone is no stranger to the "one-size-fits-all" cooking method, because it is that many friends will first come into contact with a punching method when they learn to do it. At the same time, because it is often compared with the three-stage style, there are many ways to understand it. The so-called one-size-fits-all flow is a cooking method in which the target water is divided into two stages. Its name comes from the "one-size-fits-all flow" in the Japanese swordsmanship school, which means a clean break. Because the operation looks very simple, many friends will enthusiastically try it when they are just getting started.

But it seems that such a simple way of cooking is the most difficult to use of all the cooking methods! Qianjie is not alarmist, oh, there are friends who have used one-size-fits-all to know that brewed coffee is very common, such as light taste, acidity, single level and so on. The reason is that after steaming, all the remaining water needs to be injected in one breath.

Qianjie recommends novice friends to use three-stage brewing, not because the coffee made by it will taste better than that made by one-step brewing, but it is much easier to make a good cup of coffee than one-step brewing. In "Why is it best to pour water in multiple stages of hand coffee?" In this article, Qianjie mentioned in detail that multi-stage brewing like three-stage brewing makes it easier for us to make a cup of coffee, because the target amount of water will be injected into multiple stages. so we can have more opportunities to adjust the coffee extraction (time, extraction rate), a higher fault tolerance rate.

And one-size-fits-all because nearly 90% of the water is injected in one breath, so it has no chance to remedy it, and its success or failure depends on it. The size and level of water flow will directly affect the overall extraction of coffee. Too much water injection will easily lead to too short extraction time, coffee extraction will be insufficient, while water injection too slow and too little will easily lead to too long extraction time, coffee will have the chance of over-extraction. So if we want to use one-size-fits-all to make a cup of coffee, then the flow control must be an indispensable skill. In addition to manipulation, a set of appropriate extraction parameters is also a necessary condition for making a cup of coffee in one fell swoop. Most friends use the same set of parameters when comparing one-cut and three-stage flow, and if the final result is not unexpected, the coffee will be a little worse than the one-size-fits-all coffee. for example, the taste will be thinner and the extraction will not be enough.

This is because the extraction efficiency of one-cut water injection is lower than that of three-stage extraction, and under the same parameters, the extraction rate of coffee made by one-step flow is lower than that of three-stage extraction. When we use the brewing parameters specially designed for the multi-stage style for comparison, we naturally can't make an equally good cup of coffee. Therefore, in addition to manual control, one-size-fits-all flow also needs parameters to provide higher efficiency. On the other hand, the one-knife cooking parameters are not necessarily suitable for multi-stage cooking, because the efficiency provided by the parameters is too high, with multi-stage cooking will easily lead to excessive extraction.

To sum up, we can understand why a knife flow is not only the most easy to learn, but also the most difficult to use. "easy to learn is difficult to master" is an idiom that is easy to describe. "easy to learn" is easy to operate and easy to see, while "difficult to refine" is that it is more difficult to make a cup of coffee than other ways.

How to make a cup of coffee in one fell swoop? If we want to make a good cup of coffee, we first need to understand the characteristics of the brewing object (coffee beans), such as the key information such as whether its roasting is deep or shallow, and whether the density is high or low. Then according to the characteristics of coffee beans to develop a corresponding brewing plan (method and parameter setting). For example, shallow baked beans are characterized by high density and difficult to extract (compared to deep baked beans), so the water used for cooking them will be higher and the grinding will be finer. Well, when we use one-cut flow, in addition to the parameters, we should also pay attention to the use of small water flow as far as possible when water injection, so as to prolong the extraction time and increase the extraction rate.

While deep-boiled and baked beans are just the opposite, because they are more brittle and easier to extract, we will use thicker grinding and relatively low water temperature. At the same time, it can also be matched with a large current to build a powder wall to make the layers richer (but the water temperature is higher), and if we are looking for a mellow taste, we can use a small flow to cook. Generally speaking, the parameters used in one-step flow can be adjusted directly on the basis of three-stage parameters. Take the water temperature, for example, the water temperature used in one-knife flow can be 1 ~ 2 °C higher than that used in three-stage brewing, and if the water temperature used in three-stage brewing and shallow roasting coffee is 92 °C, then the water temperature in one-knife flow can be 93 °C. The same is true of grinding, one knife flow is finer than the three-stage use of a scale.

OK, then the front street will demonstrate how to use one-size-fits-all to make a cup of coffee! The coffee beans used are light-roasted Panamanian butterflies with a water temperature of 93 °C, ground to 9 scales of Ek43 (10 scales for the three-stage model), 1:15 powder-water ratio and a V60 filter cup. According to the usual practice, we first use twice as much water as the powder for steaming for 30 seconds. Because the amount of powder used here is 15g, the amount of water injected by steaming is 30ml.

After the steaming is over, we use a small flow to slowly circle from inside to outside to inject all the remaining hot water (195ml). Because the amount of water is injected in one breath, the water level will continue to rise because the seepage rate is not as high as that of water injection, so we can observe whether there is coffee powder hanging around the wall of the filter cup. If the coffee powder will continue to float as the water level rises, then we can maintain the same rate of water injection.

And if we see that the coffee powder does not "keep up" when the water level rises, it means that the coffee density is too high to build a powder wall as the water level rises. Then we need to reduce the flow of water properly at this time to prevent water from seeping out from places where there is no coffee powder to form bypass water, which in turn affects the extraction and concentration of coffee. Because the flower butterfly did not appear in the situation described later, the front street maintained the same rate of circular water injection. When the target amount of water was injected, the time came to 1 minute and 24 seconds. In 2 minutes, the coffee liquid has all infiltrated, and then we can remove the filter cup and end the extraction.

Well, through the tasting, we can know that this cup of flower butterfly has been fully extracted. Not only the sweetness is outstanding, but the flavor is also very obvious: White flowers, citrus, honey and green tea are the flavor of this cup of butterflies. However, this cup of flower butterfly boiled in one cut is still different from the three-stage one, mainly in taste. Because the brewing method of one knife stream is mixed with soaking extraction, in addition to dripping, coffee will be soaked and extracted for a period of time. So the extraction rate of this method will not be as high as the three-stage method, but as a result, the coffee will have a more balanced taste performance because the coffee powder is extracted more evenly.

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