Coffee review

Why not recommend newbies to make coffee with powder-to-liquid ratio? What does the ratio of powder to water in coffee mean? What is the difference between powder-liquid ratio and powder-water ratio?

Published: 2025-04-22 Author:
Last Updated: 2025/04/22, Some time ago, Qianjie shared a tweet about how to make coffee more stably. It mentioned a point that puzzled many friends, namely: Compared with powder-to-liquid ratio, Qianjie Association recommends that everyone use powder-to-liquid ratio. Ratio is used as a measurement method. What many friends are confused is why the powder-liquid ratio is not suitable for use as a hand

Some time ago, Qianjie shared a tweet about how to make coffee more stably. It mentioned a point that puzzled many friends, namely: Compared with powder-to-liquid ratio, Qianjie Association recommends that everyone use powder-to-liquid ratio. Ratio is used as a measurement method. Many friends are confused by why the powder-to-liquid ratio is not suitable as a measurement method for hand-brewed coffee?

Wait, you can't button this hat randomly. It's not that the powder-to-liquid ratio is not suitable for making coffee, but that it is not suitable for novices to use it as a measuring method for making coffee by hand. The reason is as Qianjie said before, because the use of powder-to-liquid ratio is not as stable as the powder-to-water ratio.

Why not recommend beginners to use powder to make coffee? Let's first review the difference between powder-to-water ratio and powder-to-liquid ratio, both of which are measuring methods used when making coffee. But the difference is that the powder-to-water ratio calculates the amount of water we inject when making coffee, while the powder-to-liquid ratio calculates the weight of the coffee liquid we get when making coffee.

The main reason why there is a distinction between powder-liquid ratio and powder-water ratio is that small electronic scales were not yet popular in the early days, so it was difficult for people to calculate how much water was injected at that time. The making of coffee required a suitable amount of water injection, so people at that time thought of relying on the size of the container or the scale marks on the container to predict the amount of coffee liquid that was flushed out. How much coffee powder is used to get the weight of coffee liquor. This was the mainstream measurement method when making coffee at that time. (Not only the weight of liquid, but even the weight of beans needs to rely on the capacity of the appliance to replace measurement.) With the development of the times, the emergence and popularization of small electronic scales have allowed everyone to obtain timely information on water injection volume, so the measurement method of powder-to-water ratio appears. However, this metering method of powder-to-liquid ratio has not declined because of this, but it will be more used in making methods that cannot measure the amount of water injected, such as the production of espresso coffee. Then again, why doesn't Qianjie recommend using powder-to-liquid ratio as a measuring method for newbies when making coffee?

Simply, because the powder liquid is heavier than the calculated coffee liquid, we have no way of knowing how much water is injected each time. This means that the amount of water injected each time needs to be speculated based on your experience and your naked eye observation. If you are a novice, it will easily lead to too much hot water being injected in an important paragraph, which will affect the quality of the brewed coffee. Take steaming as an example. The purpose of our steaming is to wet the coffee powder, let the carbon dioxide in their bodies be emitted, and pave the way for subsequent hot water extraction. In other words, the hot water you use when steaming coffee powder must not dissolve as much of the substance dissolved after steaming. Therefore, in order to allow the target amount of water to dissolve the most coffee substances, we will try our best to control the amount of water used when making coffee, and use the least amount of hot water to wet the coffee powder for steaming. Generally speaking, it is twice the amount of water that the powder needs to absorb to dry coffee powder.

If we use more than this amount of hot water to steam, it means that the excess amount of hot water can extract will be relatively reduced, and the extraction will be relatively insufficient. For this reason, Qianjie conducted a special experiment to find out whether different amounts of steamed water can affect the taste of coffee when we have the same amount of powder and the same proportion of powder and water! The beans used in this experiment were Panamanian Poquet rose. The powder amount was 15g, the powder and water ratio was 1:15, and the ground was 10 scale of ek43. The water temperature was 92°C, which was often used on the front street. Extraction parameters. The only difference between the two portions of brewing is the amount of water used during steaming. One pot contains twice the amount of water for powder, 30ml, and the other pot contains 40ml. In order to minimize human interference, Qianjie used a knife flow for brewing this time. Then skip the brewing process and look directly at the results ~

The extraction time used for the first pot of steaming is 1 minute and 58 seconds. The coffee that comes out has a prominent flavor, with the flavors of white flowers, citrus and honey. The taste is very balanced and the sweetness is quite high. Measured by a concentration meter, the concentration of coffee was 1.40%, and the extraction rate was 19.25%. The extraction time used in another pot was 1 minute and 52 seconds. It also had excellent flavor when it was washed out, but the taste was inferior, slightly sour, and slightly thin. Measured by a concentration meter, the concentration of coffee was 1.32%, and the extraction rate was 16.88%. It can be seen that the difference between the two is not small. Of course, this may also be the influence of the technique, but everyone should know that in addition to steaming, there are other paragraphs that will affect the quality of the final coffee due to the amount of water, such as the end paragraph. Therefore, when you are just getting started and are not proficient in water control, it is best to use the ratio of powder and water as the measurement method for hand-brewed coffee, so that you can stably brew delicious coffee ~

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